Refugee Children and Youth Resilience Program

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The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), announces funding for a new Refugee Children and Youth Resilience Program. Through this award, ORR intends to establish a program that will strengthen support for ORR-eligible children, youth, and the adults caring for them by building staff capacity with child welfare knowledge at refugee-serving agencies.  The goals of this new program are three-fold: 1) to provide virtual Training and Technical Assistance (T&TA) through a child protection lens to ORR-eligible children, youth, and their families, as well as refugee-serving agencies, to ensure the safety and well-being of children and youth as they navigate the refugee resettlement and integration processes, 2) to provide in-person and group trainings to local agency staff to enable better communication and coordination between local child welfare agencies and refugee-serving agencies and to increase local capacity to support refugees children, youth, and their families, and 3) to provide virtual and emergency in-person child welfare and protection case consultations and deploy culturally competent social work, mental, and behavioral health staff to facilitate on-the-ground interventions, including during emergency crises involving refugee children, youth, and their families.  The recipient is expected to foster and engage with a network of subject-matter experts (SMEs) with child welfare experience in the fields of refugee resettlement and social work to provide both remote and on-site training, technical assistance, and consultations on critical topics, such as family strengthening, family reunification, mental health, and integration.The recipient will be expected to conduct regular needs assessments to determine the T&TA focus areas.  Additionally, the recipient will be required to develop an online resource hub with resources related to refugee children and youth resiliency. This resource hub will contain relevant information about the research and best practices that support ORR-eligible children, youth, and families as they navigate the resettlement and integration processes in the United States.ORR-eligible children, youth, and families include those eligible for refugee benefits and services including refugees, asylees, Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders, victims of human trafficking, Cuban and Haitian entrants, Amerasians, children in the Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (URM) program, and other populations as determined eligible by Congress.

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