Affordable Care Act - Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program Expansion Grants

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The purpose of this announcement is to solicit applications for the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Competitive Expansion Grant program. Expansion Grants recognize states and jurisdictions that have made significant progress towards implementing a high-quality home visiting program as part of a comprehensive, high-quality early childhood system and are ready and able to take effective programs to scale. 1 Grantees will use the funds to expand the scale and/or scope of evidence-based home visiting programs through increased enrollment and retention of families served. Additionally, this funding opportunity will continue the program’s emphasis on rigorous research by grounding the proposed work in relevant empirical literature and by including requirements to evaluate work proposed under this grant. 1   The intention here is to expand existing home visiting programs which have proven to be effective, to a larger proportion of eligible families or communities. 2 Social Security Act, Title V, Section 511(d) (4). In Fiscal Year (FY) 2013, approximately $68,328,000 will be available to support 10 – 12 competitive Expansion Grants to eligible states and jurisdictions under the MIECHV program. Successful applicants will be awarded FY 2013 competitive Expansion Grant funds, in addition to the FY2013 MIECHV formula based funds. Priority for Serving High-Risk Populations and Programmatic Areas of Emphasis As directed in the legislation, 2successful applicants will give priority to providing services to the following populations: a) Eligible families who reside in communities in need of such services, as identified in the statewide needs assessment required under subsection (b)(1)(A). b) Low-income eligible families. c) Eligible families who are pregnant women who have not attained age 21. d) Eligible families that have a history of child abuse or neglect or have had interactions with child welfare services. e) Eligible families that have a history of substance abuse or need substance abuse treatment. f) Eligible families that have users of tobacco products in the home. g) Eligible families that are or have children with low student achievement. h) Eligible families with children with developmental delays or disabilities. i) Eligible families who, or that include individuals who, are serving or formerly served in the Armed Forces, including such families that have members of the Armed Forces who have had multiple deployments outside of the United States." In addition, the Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) and the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) have identified the following programmatic areas of emphasis. Applicants may propose to address one or more of these areas in response to this funding opportunity announcement: • Emphasis 1: Improvements in maternal, child, and family health HRSA-13-215 ii • Emphasis 2: Effective implementation and expansion of evidence-based home visiting programs or systems, with fidelity to the evidence-based model selected • Emphasis 3: Development of statewide or multi-state home visiting programs • Emphasis 4: Development of comprehensive early childhood systems that span the prenatal-through-age-eight continuum • Emphasis 5: Outreach to high-risk and hard-to-engage populations • Emphasis 6: Development of a family-centered approach to home visiting • Emphasis 7: Outreach to families in rural or frontier areas • Emphasis 8: The development of fiscal leveraging strategies to enhance program sustainability Note: Fidelity is defined as a grantee’s adherence to model developer requirements for implementation. These requirements include all aspects of initiating and implementing a home visiting model, including, but not limited to: recruiting and retaining clients, providing initial and ongoing training, supervision, and professional development for staff, establishing a management information system to track data related to fidelity and services, and establishing an integrated resource and referral network to support client needs. For a more detailed description of each area of emphasis, please see Appendix A: MIECHV Programmatic Emphasis Areas.

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