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The purpose of this FOA would be to establish, by awarding one cooperative agreement, a National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (NCWWI) to advance federal priorities to improve safety, permanency, and well-being by building the capacity of child welfare professionals and improving the organizations that recruit, train, supervise, manage, and retain them. The Workforce Institute will play a national leadership role in the field of child welfare in the following broad areas: (1)Demonstrating how university partnerships support workforce development; (2) Implementing organizational interventions to improve workforce recruitment and retention; (3) Providing leadership training across the child welfare career spectrum; (4) Developing cross system approaches to improve worker and child outcomes; and (5) Building evidence of best practices in workforce development. A broad range of activities will be undertaken by the Workforce Institute to promote effective child welfare practice, enhance agency efforts to create supportive work environments, and improve worker recruitment and retention outcomes by: Implementing an innovative, comprehensive and integrated organizational, educational, and professional development approach to effective child welfare workforce development building on the last two iterations of NCWWI work; Implementing effective workforce organizational interventions that result in improved agency climate, worker preparation, recruitment, and retention outcomes for agencies; such as reduction in emotional stress and worker burnout, increased length of stay for workers, changes in worker attitude and satisfaction, increased recruitment, etc.; Demonstrating expertise in collecting and disseminating information about effective and promising workforce practices in innovative ways;

This targeted 5-year cooperative agreement is to be awarded to create a national center of excellence to develop, implement and evaluate curriculum in child welfare agency settings that will: Support the child welfare workforce to better understand social and emotional needs of children and families involved in the child welfare system. Support the child welfare workforce to better screen and assess for social and emotional needs of children and families. Support the child welfare workforce to understand the effective interventions and active ingredients of those interventions and how to ensure children and families receive those interventions. Increase exposure to active ingredients and Evidence Based Practices for agency staff through enhanced curriculum and practicums. Provide professional development opportunities for agency staff by developing, delivering, and evaluating course offerings, continuing education, and certificate programs aimed at addressing the shortage of child welfare practitioners prepared to deliver evidence based child and family treatment. Provide curriculum aimed at assisting case managers to make excellent decisions about how to refer and evaluate the effectiveness of the services provided to the children and families in their care. Develop decision making tools for agency leadership that might assist them in assessing their current mental health service array. These tools would provide direction about the cost and effectiveness of the mental health services in their current service array, assist the administrator in evaluating if the current mental health services are achieving intended outcomes, and provide guidance on best practice in implementing evidence based treatment services.

The Administration for Children and Families, Children’s Bureau announces the availability of one grant to: (1) implement a multi-system approach among public and private agencies integrating community and faith-based to promote effective partnerships; (2) develop or enhance a navigator program to meet caregivers own needs and the needs of the children they are raising; (3) utilize intensive family-finding activities, including search technology, effective family engagement, collaboration with child support, and other means to identify biological family members for the target population to create a greater volume of relationships and connectedness within their families and establish permanent family placements when appropriate; and (4) implement family group decision-making (FGDM) meetings for children in the child welfare system. The project funded under this announcement will be implemented through strong collaboration between the grantee and the public child welfare agency. The successful applicant will facilitate cross collaboration and data sharing among relevant agencies, including the courts, child welfare, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), aging and family caregiver support programs, child support, fatherhood programs, education, domestic violence, mental health and substance abuse in order to better identify, assess, and service kinship caregivers and at-risk families within the child welfare system.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement/Division of Children's Services (ORR/DCS), within the Administration for Children and Families, provides temporary shelter care and other child welfare-related services to Unaccompanied Children (UC) in ORR custody. Residential care services begin once ORR accepts a UC for placement and ends when the minor is released from ORR custody, turns 18 years of age, or the minor’s immigration case results in a final disposition of removal from the United States. Residential care and other child welfare-related services are provided by State-licensed residential care programs in the least restrictive setting appropriate for the UC’s age and special needs. ORR is announcing this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) to seek shelter, to include group homes and transitional foster care, care providers. Residential care providers, operating a shelter facility, must be licensed by an appropriate State agency to provide residential, group, or foster care services for children.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement/Division of Children's Services (ORR/DCS), within the Administration for Children and Families, provides temporary shelter care and other child welfare-related services to Unaccompanied Children (UC) in ORR custody. Residential care services begin once ORR accepts a UC for placement and ends when the minor is released from ORR custody, turns 18 years of age, or the minor’s immigration case results in a final disposition of removal from the United States. Residential care and other child welfare-related services are provided by State-licensed residential care programs in the least restrictive setting appropriate for the UC’s age and special needs. ORR is announcing this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) to seek shelter, to include group homes and transitional foster care, care providers. Residential care providers, operating a shelter facility, must be licensed by an appropriate State agency to provide residential, group, or foster care services for children.

When children are placed in out-of-home care (also called foster care), it is important that child welfare agencies find safe, permanent homes for them as quickly as possible. In many circumstances, children can be reunited with their families, but in some cases, children find homes with relatives or adoptive families. Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSRs) have consistently found that many child welfare systems need to improve their adoption work, as evidenced by their difficulty in achieving substantial conformity on permanency outcomes. These shortcomings include failure to make concerted efforts towards timely permanency for adoption and preserving family connections; inadequate engagement of parents, children and youth in case planning; limited and ineffective service provision; insufficient frequency and duration of child visitations/parenting time; punitive uses of visitation/parenting time; delays in establishing the goal of adoption; a lack of meaningful concurrent planning; and lengthy appeal processes for contested termination of parental rights. These permanency outcomes relate to basic social work, legal, and judicial practices that impact adoption outcomes and also have effects on the safety and well-being of children in care. The purpose of this funding opportunity is to award up to five 5-year cooperative agreements for the development, implementation, and evaluation of strategies that focus on better adoption outcomes by improving basic social work, legal, and judicial practice in order to eliminate systemic barriers to: adoption; preventing entry into foster care; and other forms of permanency. Due to the intersection of permanency, safety, and well-being, an effective system reform effort focused on improving adoption outcomes by improving concurrent planning and reducing time to permanency will also require attention to safety and well-being outcomes.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) seeks to enhance the ability of the juvenile justice, child welfare, mental health, and education systems to share information that will facilitate the provision of services and ensure better outcomes for children, youth, and families. OJJDP will deliver training and technical assistance (TTA) services to build state, local, and tribal capacities to implement solutions to address this nationwide need. Through this program, OJJDP will build the capacity of juvenile justice, child welfare, mental health, and education systems and use existing information sharing standards, procedures, tools, and practices across agencies to improve services and outcomes for youth, families, and communities.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF), Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) support organizations and communities that work every day to put an end to youth homelessness, adolescent pregnancy, and domestic violence. FYSB's Runaway and Homeless Youth (RHY) program is accepting applications for the Basic Center Program (BCP). The purpose of the BCP is to provide temporary shelter and counseling services to youth who have left home without permission of their parents or guardians, have been forced to leave home, or other homeless youth who might otherwise end up in the law enforcement or in the child welfare, mental health, or juvenile justice systems.

The Administration for Children and Families' (ACF), Administration on Children, Youth and Families' (ACYF), Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) will award funding for the Basic Center Program(BCP). The purpose of the BCP is to provide an alternative for runaway and homeless youth who might otherwise end up with law enforcement or in the child welfare, mental health, or juvenile justice systems. The BCP works to establish or strengthen community-based programs that meet the immediate needs of runaway and homeless youth and their families. The programs provide youth up to age 18 with emergency shelter, food, clothing, counseling and referrals for health care. Most basic centers can provide 21 days of shelter for up to 20 youth at a time. There are exceptions for jurisdictions that have different standards for licensing. Basic centers seek to reunite young people with their families, whenever possible, or to locate appropriate alternative placements.

The purpose of this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is to award one cooperative agreement to develop a state-of-the-art foster/adoptive parent training program to include intensive preparation and development components that reflect the capacities required of successful foster/adoptive parents. This is intended to be a product that could be utilized by all states, tribes, and territories and consistently applied wherever implemented. Development of this program would include research on the common characteristics of individuals and their foster/adoptive families that have succeeded in terms of well-being and stability. Common characteristics of families that are more likely to foster and/or adopt harder to place children/youth and are successful and remain committed to the relationship will be identified and integrated into the program. The program would be inclusive of development, training, and capacity needs of individuals/families that are interested in becoming foster parents, as well as those who are interested in fostering with the intention to eventually adopt; therefore many concepts would be in common for foster and adoptive parents. There would be particular focus for foster parents on working on reunification efforts with birth parents and for adoption there would be particular focus on the common adoption issues pertinent to all types of adoption, i.e., child welfare, private domestic, and international. The initial year would entail an extensive review of all current training and preparation programs and include new intervention strategies that foster/adoptive parents should be skilled in as they develop as foster and adoptive parents. The initial year would also involve the basic development of the new intensive training modules.

The purpose of this funding opportunity is to fund cooperative agreements that support the development, implementation, and evaluation of strategies that prevent child maltreatment, reduce entry into the public child welfare system, and enhance the overall well-being outcomes of children and families. Funding will be used to improve the safety and stability of all families and reinforce supportive, nurturing relationships by: enhancing the capacity of communities to offer broad-based family supports; using data to inform and align strategies across sectors to address site specific barriers; supporting strategic collaborations with traditional family serving agencies and non-traditional partners; and coordinating, monitoring, and reporting on strategies and outcomes across multi-sector partners. The project period is for 5 years.

The purpose of this funding opportunity announcement is to establish by cooperative agreement a National Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention (Center). The project will have a 60-month project period with five 12-month budget periods. The Center will be the primary provider of training and technical assistance to build the capacity of Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention (CBCAP) State Lead Agencies (SLAs), and their partners, to implement successful strategies that strengthen families and prevents child maltreatment. The key focus of the Center will be to enhance the ability of SLAs to effectively implement the requirements of the program and support evidence-informed and evidence-based child maltreatment prevention programs and activities. The Center will facilitate lead agency efforts in the planning and development of a network of interdisciplinary community-based programs and activities designed to strengthen and support families to prevent child abuse and neglect. The Center will also promote stronger linkages between the CBCAP SLA and the child welfare, as well as other child and family systems.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) will fund a Quality Improvement Center (QIC) that will support demonstration sites that establish or enhance collaborative community court teams to design, implement and test approaches to meet the requirements of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) of 2010 as amended by the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 (CARA) and that better meet the needs of infants and families affected by substance use disorder and prenatal substance exposure. This FOA is intended to build on and enhance the basic collaborative approach offered by the Quality Improvement Center for Research-Based Infant Toddler Court Teams (QIC-ITCT) to specifically address the needs of infants, young children, and their parents or caregivers affected by substance use disorder. The FOA is intended to produce sustainable approaches and strategies that will be useful nationally in addressing this epidemic.The QIC must support demonstration sites in assessing their current capacity to collaboratively address the health and substance use disorder treatment needs of infants, young children and their parents or caregivers, and create or enhance a continuous quality improvement approach for ensuring that local entities work effectively across systems and best understand whether and in what manner they are providing services in accordance with CARA's state requirements. The demonstration sites must involve intensive collaboration among the child welfare agency, Court Improvement Program, local courts, legal community, substance abuse treatment providers, preventative service providers, mental health providers, medical providers, and other key stakeholders.

THE ADMINISTRATION for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families' Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) announces the availability of funds under the Basic Center Program (BCP). THE BCP works to establish or strengthen community-based programs that meet the immediate needs of runaway and homeless youth up to age 18 years of age and their families. BCPs provide youth with emergency shelter, food, clothing, counseling and referrals for health care. Basic centers can provide temporary shelter for up to 21 days for youth and seeks to reunite young people with their families, whenever possible, or to locate appropriate alternative placements. Additional services may include: street-based services; home-based services for families with youth at risk of separation from the family; drug abuse education and prevention services. THE PRIMARY purpose of the BCP is to provide counseling services to youth who have left home without permission of their parents or guardians have been forced to leave home, or other homeless youth who might end up in contact with law enforcement or in the child welfare, mental health, or juvenile justice systems. THE AWARD process for FY2018 BCP allows for annual awards over a three-year project period as funds are available.

The purpose of this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is to provide competitive grant funds for regional partnership grants (RPGs) to improve the well-being of children affected by substance abuse. These targeted grants will be awarded to regional partnerships that provide through interagency collaboration and integration of programs and services, activities and services that are designed to increase the well-being of, improve permanency outcomes for, and enhance the safety of children who are in out-of-home placements or are at risk of entering out-of-home placements as a result of a parent's or caretaker's substance abuse. Applicants are expected to have a collaborative structure in place that is capable of building a region's capacity to meet a broad range of needs for families involved with both substance abuse treatment and the child welfare system. Per the legislative requirements, RPGs are required to select and report on performance indicators and evaluation measures to increase the knowledge that can be gained from the program. Partnerships will: Use specific, well-defined, and evidence-based programs that are also trauma-informed and targeted to the identified population; Conduct an evaluation that is sufficiently rigorous to contribute to the evidence base on service delivery, outcomes and costs associated with the project's chosen interventions; and Participate in the national cross-site evaluation, which includes an implementation and partnership study, an outcomes study, and an impact study.

The purpose of this Notice of Funding Opportunity Announcement (NOFO) is to strengthen district, state and national public health systems in India to sustain and continue advancement of Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) priorities to prevent, detect, and respond to disease threats across the country. This NOFO will help augment and transition GHSA assisted activities increasingly to Government of India (GoI) including, but not limited to the following Ministry of Family Health and Welfare (MoHFW) institutions: National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC); National Health Mission (NHM); and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). Other key institutions include the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying (MoFAD); the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA); and the All Indian Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS). This NOFO will focus on supporting logistical and technical requirements in five core public health capacities among these GoI institutions: antimicrobial resistance (AMR); workforce development capacity; surveillance and outbreak response; safe laboratory systems and diagnostics; public health emergency response capacity. Also, this NOFO will support GHSA governance efforts within the GoI for effective implementation of GHSA activities and International Health Regulations (IHR) compliance.

The Runaway and Homeless Youth Program's Basic Center Program (BCP) provides temporary shelter and counseling services to youth who have left home without permission of their parents or guardians, have been forced to leave home, or other homeless youth who might otherwise end up in the law enforcement or in the child welfare, mental health, or juvenile justice systems. BCPs work to establish or strengthen community-based programs that meet the immediate needs of runaway and homeless youth and their families. BCPs provide youth under 18 years of age with emergency shelter, food, clothing, counseling and referrals for health care. BCPs can provide up to 21 days of shelter for youth and seeks to reunite young people with their families, whenever possible, or to locate appropriate alternative placements. Additional services may include: street-based services; home-based services for families with youth at risk of separation from the family; drug abuse education and prevention services; and at the request of runaway and homeless youth, testing for sexually transmitted diseases.

The SBIR program is Congressionally mandated and intended to support scientific excellence and technological innovation through the investment of federal research funds to build a strong national economy by stimulating technological innovation in the private sector; strengthening the role of small business in meeting federal research and development needs; increasing the commercial application of federally supported research results; and fostering and encouraging participation by socially and economically disadvantaged and women-owned small businesses. The SBIR program at NSF solicits proposals from the small business sector consistent with NSF's mission to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; and to secure the national defense. A main purpose of the legislation is to stimulate technological innovation and increase private sector commercialization. The NSF SBIR/STTR program is therefore in a unique position to meet both the goals of NSF and the purpose of the SBIR/STTR legislation by transforming scientific discovery and innovation into both social and economic benefit, and by emphasizing private sector commercialization.

The Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood supports creative, innovative projects and programs designed to significantly enhance the development, health, safety, education, and/or quality of life for children from infancy through five years of age. The foundation provides funding in the areas of early childhood welfare, early childhood education and play, and parenting education.

The opioid epidemic has disrupted public safety and significantly increased the burden on state and local law enforcement, substance abuse treatment delivery systems, mental health systems, child welfare and foster care, and the juvenile justice and criminal justice systems. Through this program, OJJDP is helping states and communities develop a data-driven, coordinated response to opioid abuse-related challenges that impact youth and community safety. Funding under this program may be used to support programs and services to youth and families impacted by both opioids and other substance use disorders.