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The Street Outreach Program (SOP) provides street-based services to runaway, homeless, and street youth who have been subjected to or are at risk of being subjected to sexual abuse, prostitution, sexual exploitation, and severe forms of human trafficking in persons. These services, targeted in areas where street youth congregate, are designed to assist such youth in making healthy choices and providing them access to shelter as well as basic needs, including food, hygiene packages and information on a rage of available services.

The 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. BCP award recipients provide youth under 18 years of age with emergency shelter, food, clothing, counseling and referrals for health care. BCP award recipients 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 Maternity Group Home (MGH) program provides safe, stable, and appropriate shelter for pregnant and/or parenting youth and young adults ages 16 to under 22 who have runaway or are experiencing homelessness, and their dependent child(ren), for 18 months and, under extenuating circumstances, up to 21 months. Service providers must accommodate for the needs and safety of the dependent children to include facility safety standards for infants and children on the premises. MGH services include, but are not limited to, parenting skills, child development, family budgeting, and health and nutrition education, in addition to the required services provided under the Transitional Living Program to help MGH youth and young adults realize improvements in four core outcome areas. The MGH combination of shelter and services is designed to promote long-term, economic independence to ensure the well-being of the youth and their child(ren).

**A modification to this NOFO was made on April 4, 2024. There are no content changes to application or program requirements. The funding opportunity number was changed from HHS-2024-ACF-ACYF-CW-0056 to HHS-2024-ACF-ACYF-CT-0056. There were changes made in Section I, Statutory Authority; and Section II, Expected Number of Awards and Estimated Total Funding. In Section III, Eligibility was changed to exclude for-profit organizations and small businesses. American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) children are nearly 3 times more likely to enter foster care, compared to non-Native children. These four year grants are intended to generate evidence for how best to effectively implement child welfare practices and ongoing active efforts to maintain AI/AN families by funding state and tribal partnerships to jointly design and operate Indian child welfare best practice implementation demonstration sites. The evidence generated and lessons learned through this effort are intended to contribute to implementation efforts nationally to help maintain and preserve AI/AN families and allow their children to remain connected to their communities and cultures. The purpose of this notice of funding opportunity is to create and implement intergovernmental partnership models to improve implementation of child welfare best practices that are culturally appropriate for federally recognized AI/AN children to prevent maltreatment, removal from families and communities, and improve safety, permanency, and well-being. Recipients will serve as demonstration sites to design and implement projects to effectively implement culturally appropriate best practices in Indian child welfare, including measuring improvements in child welfare practice, Indian child welfare codes, legal and judicial processes, case monitoring, case planning, data collection, in-home family preservation services, infrastructure, and systems change. Partnerships must include the state Court Improvement Program, the state child welfare agency, and one or more tribal governments or tribal consortia including corresponding tribal court(s). The "Tribal government" partner(s) may be tribal child welfare agencies where appropriate under tribal law or custom.Effective culturally appropriate best practices for implementation require a high degree of collaboration between state and tribal courts and Indian child welfare agencies. Thus, both states and tribes must identify, build, and enhance necessary capacities. State/tribal collaborations will work together to craft solutions for longstanding challenges to providing effective best practices in Indian child welfare in ways that work best for their communities. This funding opportunity is intended to encourage state and tribal governments to work together to find creative, rational ways to meet the needs of AI/AN families with culturally appropriate best practices in Indian child welfare, with active efforts to retain or reunite Indian children with family as the “gold standard” for best Indian child welfare practice. The award also provides an important opportunity for states and tribes to build or strengthen relationships of trust by working together toward common family preservation goals. As part of the project, recipients may also consider the role of civil legal services in implementation efforts. Assessment of the success and/or need for legal representation to parties in Indian child welfare cases may be included in project work, as may provision of direct civil legal services, to the extent that such legal services are an identified part of a pilot or practice model to be tested.For purposes of this funding opportunity, "Tribal courts" are defined consistent with the Bureau of Indian Affairs regulations as "a court with jurisdiction over child custody proceedings and which is either a Court of Indian Offenses, a court established and operated under the code or custom of an Indian tribe, or any other administrative body of a tribe which is vested with authority over child custody proceedings.

NIMH seeks applications for pilot research to adapt, optimize, and test empirically supported behavioral interventions that address common sleep problems in adolescents and young adults with or at risk for a mental health disorder. Pilot trials should be designed to evaluate the feasibility, tolerability, acceptability, safety, and potential effectiveness of the approach in real world settings, and to conduct a preliminary test of the interventions impact on target mechanisms and sleep and mental health outcomes, and to obtain preliminary data needed as a prerequisite a larger-scale effectiveness trial. An emphasis is placed on studies that address the needs of youth from understudied and underserved populations.

The Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families' Family and Youth Services Bureau will be accepting applications from eligible local organizations and entities, including faith-based organizations or consortia, for the development and implementation of the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) in states that do not accept FY2024 allocations for State PREP. The purpose of this program is to support projects that educate youth, between the ages of 10 and 19 years, and pregnant and parenting youth under age 21, on abstinence and contraception for the prevention of pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and HIV/AIDS. Projects are also required to implement at least three of the following six adulthood preparation subjects: healthy relationships, adolescent development, financial literacy, parent-child communication, educational and career success, and healthy life skills. The estimated award amount is based upon FY 2023 funding available for Competitive PREP awards and is subject to change.

The Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families' Family and Youth Services Bureau announces the anticipated availability of funds under the General Departmental Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (GDSRAE) Program. The purpose of the GDSRAE Program is to fund projects to implement sexual risk avoidance education that teach participants how to voluntarily refrain from non-marital sexual activity. The services are targeted to participants that reside in areas with high rates of teen births and/or are at greatest risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs). The goals of GDSRAE are to empower participants to make healthy decisions, and provide tools and resources to prevent pregnancy, STIs, and youth engagement in other risky behaviors. Successful applicants are expected to submit program plans that agree to: use medically accurate information referenced to peer-reviewed publications by 1) educational, scientific, governmental, or health organizations; 2) implement sexual risk avoidance curricula and/or strategies with an evidence-based approach integrating research findings with practical implementation that aligns with the needs and desired outcomes for the intended audience; and 3) teach the benefits associated with self-regulation, success sequencing for poverty prevention, healthy relationships, goal setting, and resisting sexual coercion, dating violence, and other youth risk behaviors such as underage drinking or illicit drug use without normalizing teen sexual activity.

The purpose of this funding opportunity announcement is to establish by cooperative agreement the National Tribal Child Welfare Center for Innovation and Advancement (Center). The Center will serve as the Children’s Bureau’s (CB) primary vehicle for delivering effective, high-quality technical assistance (TA) to Title IV-B and Title IV-E American Indian and Alaska Native Nations (AI/AN). TA provided will enhance organizational and system performance, and improve outcomes for tribal children, youth, and families by honoring Indigenous Ways of Knowing (IWOK) and working collaboratively to ensure the preservation of tribal cultures.The Center will provide culturally responsive TA in these areas:Workforce Supports: Increase the knowledge, skills, and capacities of child welfare professionals in the tribal child welfare workforcePrevention Programs: Support for the development, enhancement, and expansion of tribal prevention programsDevelopment of Tribal Child Welfare Programs in Support of Federal Requirements: Support successful development, enhancement, expansion, and implementation of tribal programs in meeting federal requirementsTribal-State Collaboration: Develop and support meaningful state and tribal collaborationsData Management: Enhance capacity for data collection, analysis, visualization, and procurement of case management systemsFunding Opportunity Goal(s) CB's goals are: (1) to assist tribes in achieving sustainable, systemic change that results in greater safety, permanency, and well-being for children, youth, and families. and (2) to dramatically improve the experiences of children, youth, and families when contact with the child welfare system is necessary and (3) to deliver effective, high-quality technical assistance to tribal child welfare agencies.

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.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Community Services (OCS) announces the availability of grants to Community Action Agencies (CAAs) and tribes that were funded directly by the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) in FY 2024 that own affordable housing units and provide wraparound supportive services to residents of the affordable units, including educational opportunities for youths and adults; afterschool and/or summer programs for children and teens; early childcare, Head Start, Early Head Start, or other early childhood education programs/opportunities for young children ages 0 to 5; older adult care services; mental health, alcohol, and addiction services; services for individuals with disabilities; self-sufficiency resources; resources on future homeownership; financial literacy training; transportation services for residents; referrals and connections to resources to help meet concrete needs; and health care services.Through this funding opportunity, recipients will be able to leverage their expertise and partnerships to provide wraparound supportive services to residents of affordable housing, with the goal of improving housing stability and economic mobility. Applicants will need to demonstrate a long-standing ability to: 1. promote safety, stability, and economic mobility for residents through strengthened wraparound supportive services 2. advance equity through their affordable housing and supportive service efforts; and3. collect data related to residential services and evaluate efforts.Recipients will participate fully in a federal evaluation and follow all evaluation protocols established by ACF and/or its designee contractor(s). Fully participating in a federal evaluation may include supporting and complying with data collection requirements, providing administrative data on program participation, and other activities. In addition, the federal evaluation may include an evaluation of the implementation of this demonstration.