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The 21st Century Conservation Service Corps and Civilian Climate Corps ProgramsOverview: NPS Youth and Veteran Development Programs represent the future of the NPS and encompasses a full range of 21CSC/CCC oriented developmental programs and projects conducted in and around national park units, NPS support offices, as well as in local communities and with partner organizations. NPS Youth Development Programs are committed to evolving and advancing vibrant and relevant youth and young adult programming that emphasize the mission of the NPS. NPS Youth Development Programs are designed to provide employment, education, experiential learning, and public service opportunities to U.S. citizens and legal residents who are between the ages of 16 and 30, and veterans up to 35 years of age.The 21CSC/CCC is a collaborative effort between federal government agencies and non-profit service organizations to put America’s youth and veterans to work protecting, restoring and enhancing America’s great outdoors. Through the 21CSC/CCC, young people and veterans will accomplish meaningful work, and gain important personal and professional skills while building a lifelong connection to the outdoors. The 21CSC/CCC strives to achieve the following public purpose goals and objectives:1) Put Americans to Work: The 21CSC/CCC will provide service, training, education and employment opportunities for thousands of young Americans and veterans, including low income and disadvantaged youth.2) Preserve, Protect, and Promote America's Greatest Gifts: The 21CSC/CCC will protect, restore, and enhance public and tribal lands and waters as well as natural, cultural, and historical resources and treasures. By producing high-quality, cost-effective project work from the 21CSC/CCC will also increase public access and use while spurring economic development and outdoor recreation.3) Build America's Future: Through service to the United States of America, the 21CSC/CCC will help develop a generation of skilled workers, educated and active citizens, future leaders, and stewards of natural and cultural resources, communities, and the nation.4) Provide a Living Wage: A reasonable living wage which is at the minimum equivalent to the minimum wage for the area. A continuum of benefits to support a corps members whole person can include compensation, housing, and other benefits.5) Provide a Pathway to Employment: Build a pipeline of talent and skilled labor of individuals inspired to enter public service or set them up for good-paying careers through intentional labor partnerships, pre-apprenticeship programs, and more.6) Represent America: Corps members should reflect the rich diversity of America, including hiring people from underserved communities, individuals with disabilities, Native Tribes, returning veterans, and unskilled young adults seeking vocational, internship, and educational opportunities.7) Tackle Climate Change: Tackle climate change from all angles by expanding the scope of climate solutions projects eligible for federal government support.8) Appropriate conservation projects and other appropriate projects to be carried out on federal, state, local, or private land as part of a federal disaster prevention or relief effort.Purpose: The NPS Youth Development Programs Division seeks to develop collaborative partnerships with non-profit youth-serving organizations who have the expertise to develop and administrator 21CSC programs that focus on providing employment, education, and engagement opportunities for U.S. citizens and legal residents in NPS units and affiliated sites such as National Register of Historic Places, National Heritage Areas, National Wild and Scenic Rivers, National Historic Landmarks, National Trails, and adjacent gateway communities. The primary purpose of the funds is for the benefit of the interns participating in the program.Participant Requirements: U.S. citizens and legal residents between the ages of 16 and 30 years of age, and veterans up to 35 years of age.Types of Projects: Natural and cultural resource conservation projects that are developed in collaboration with NPS officials with an emphasis on public purpose for the benefit of the American public, as well as, for providing employment and educational opportunities to young people and veterans. These projects will provide the participants with job skills training, education, and/or professional development. The employment focused projects are organized in either: 1) a crew-based format where the participants work collectively and intensely together and are directly supervised by trained and experienced crew leaders or conservation professionals; or 2) a individual or small team-based format where participants work individually or in coordinated teams under the direction of conservation professionals on initiatives that require specific skills and dedicated attention. The work projects include significant outdoor activity and/or helps young people and veterans connect with “America’s Great Outdoors”. Some projects may include work primarily indoors (i.e., research, policy, web development, visitor services, or administration) but also has a clear and direct connection to natural and cultural resource conservation.Project Examples:Climate change mitigation and resilienceCyclic maintenanceDevelopment of educational resource materials for visitorsEcosystem restorationEnhancing recreational opportunitiesField-based service such as trail building/restoration, removing invasive species and habitat restoration.GIS and mapping resourcesInterpretation of natural and cultural resourcesMuseum curationPreserving historic structuresProtecting of wildlife and preserving lands and structuresResearch such as scientific, historic, archival, archaeological digs, oral histories, historic preservation, and habitat surveys etc.Restoration and rehabilitation of facilitiesSupport management of natural and cultural resources such as developing and implementing resource stewardship plans, developing educational and informational materials for park visitorsTechnologically based natural and cultural resource educational programs and communication outreachVisitor educationEducation Projects: The National Park Service is committed to providing educational opportunities to 21CSC qualified individuals that help them to learn about American values, civic engagement, and citizenship stewardship. These projects utilize various educational techniques to convey and teach the NPS mission of natural and resource conservation.Education Project Examples:Projects that target 21CSC qualified participants and provide place-based learning opportunities with a focus on natural and/or cultural resource stewardship.Seminars that provide training opportunities for 21CSC qualified participants that promote natural and cultural resource stewardship and gateway community collaboration.Applicant Organizational RequirementsThe applicant organization should be able to clearly demonstrate their ability to design natural and cultural resource conservation projects that accomplish needed and important work on public lands while at the same time providing their 21CSC participants with educational, technical, life, and leadership skills. Each participant should develop a sense of community and purpose from their work on these projects. NPS may give preference to qualified youth or conservation corps organizations (see definition below) located in a specific area that have a substantial portion of members who are economically, physically, or educationally disadvantaged to carry out projects within the area. Park asset acquisition or personal services are not allowable.Public Land Corps Law DefinitionQualified Youth or Conservation Corps means any program established and administered by a State or local government, by the governing body of any Indian tribe, or a nonprofit organization that: 1) Carries out appropriate conservation projects on or related to eligible service land; 2) Is capable of offering meaningful, full-time, productive work for individuals between the ages of 16 and 30, inclusive, or veterans age 35 or younger, in a natural or cultural resource setting; 3) Engages participants in a variety of work experience, basic and life skills, education, training, and support services; 4) Provides participants with the opportunity to develop citizenship values and skills through service to their community and the United States; and 5) Provides the individual with a living allowance, stipend, or wages.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Head Start (OHS) announces the availability of approximately $102 million to be competitively awarded for the purpose of expanding access to high-quality, comprehensive services to low-income infants, toddlers, and their families through Early Head Start-Child Care (EHS-CC) Partnerships, or through the expansion of Head Start services and/or Early Head Start services. ACF solicits applications from public entities, including states, or private non-profit organizations, including community-based or faith-based organizations, or for-profit agencies that meet eligibility for applying as stated in section 42 U.S.C. 9840A of the Head Start Act. Interested applicants may email OHSgrants@koniag-gs.com for additional information.OHS encourages interested applicants to visit https://www.acf.hhs.gov/grants/how-apply-grant. This webpage provides information on applying for grants, registering and applying through Grants.gov, submitting an application, and understanding the grant review process.

With this solicitation, OJJDP seeks to build the capacity of states, state and local courts, units of local government, and federally recognized Tribal governments to implement new and innovative approaches to enhance existing juvenile drug treatment courts (JDTC) and improve outcomes for youth with substance use disorder or co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders, including those with histories of trauma.

**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.

The purpose of this notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) is to establish by cooperative agreement a National Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention (Center). The Center will be the Children’s Bureau’s primary provider of training and technical assistance to build the capacity of Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention (CBCAP) recipients, (to include states, tribes, tribal organizations, and migrant programs) and their partners to implement successful strategies that strengthen families and prevent child maltreatment. The key focus of the Center will be to enhance the ability of CBCAP recipients 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 CBCAP recipients’ work to plan for and develop a network of interdisciplinary community-based programs and activities that offer a continuum of services and resources that strengthen and support families to prevent child abuse and neglect. The Center will also promote CBCAP recipient efforts to engage individuals with lived expertise in critical decisions related to planning, implementing, and evaluating their CBCAP programs, and foster enhanced linkages between CBCAP recipients and child welfare, as well as other child and family systems to ensure families can access community supports tailored to address their unique needs. The project will have a 60-month project period with five 12-month budget periods.

The purpose of this NOFO is to establish a cooperative agreement for a National Legal and Judicial Child Welfare Center for Innovation and Advancement (Center). The Center will serve to build the capacity of the State and Tribal Court Improvement Programs (CIPs) and the broader child welfare legal and judicial communities through a variety of technical assistance (TA). The Center will support improving legal and judicial practice at different stages of child welfare, including prevention, reunification, adoption, permanency, and post-permanency. The Center will build the capacity of TA beneficiaries to meet current and future standards and requirements described in statute and federal regulations (including those specified under titles IV-B and IV-E of the Social Security Act), improve system performance, and improve outcomes for children, youth, and families. The Center will incorporate equity and continuous quality improvement (CQI) approaches throughout these efforts.

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 Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE), within the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Administration for Children and Families (ACF), plans to solicit applications for cooperative agreements under the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Lead Agency Data and Research Capacity: Planning Grants (Phase I). These projects are meant to support partnerships between CCDF Lead Agencies and researchers to develop and improve state, territory, and tribal data systems and build the capacity of CCDF Lead Agencies to collect, analyze, and use data to guide child care policy decisions and program improvement efforts. Sponsored projects will work in collaboration to: (1) assess the current data and research capacity of the CCDF Lead Agency; (2) develop questions of interest to investigate state, territory, and tribal child care policies and practices; (3) develop logic models to identify the data needed to address the questions of interest; (4) identify data sources available to answer questions of interest and assess the accessibility of those data; (5) identify possible data sources from other state, territory, tribal, and local data systems for linking; (6) determine whether there is a need to collect data to answer policy-relevant questions; and (7) address the barriers to collecting, analyzing, and using data to inform child care policy decisions. These projects are intended to build the capacity of CCDF Lead Agencies to use data, including data on children, families, the workforce, and providers that participate in the child care subsidy system, to make data-informed decisions to improve child care policies and practices. These 18-month projects, with one project and budget period, will fund a planning phase to develop a research plan to address questions of interest to the CCDF Lead Agency, including a plan for identifying, linking, and using state, territory, and tribal data to inform child care policy decisions. These planning projects may be followed by a second competition (Phase II), under a separate Notice of Funding Opportunity, to support execution of the research plans to develop and improve state, territory, and tribal data systems. Projects must be conducted through partnerships between CCDF Lead Agencies (i.e., states, territories, Tribes, or local subsidy administering agencies) and researchers from institutions of higher education, within the state agency, research organizations, and/or other organizations with proven expertise conducting policy research. Applications are invited from CCDF Lead Agencies, institutions of higher education, research organizations, and other organizations with proven expertise conducting policy research. The research supported by this program should be collaborative from start to finish. The CCDF Lead Agency and their research partners must work together to assess the current data and research capacity of the CCDF Lead Agency and develop a feasible plan for identifying, linking, and using data to address questions of relevance to the CCDF Lead Agency. Sponsored projects will be expected to participate in a Consortium that will meet and communicate regularly to identify opportunities for coordination, such as to share information on facilitators and barriers to identifying and using data to inform child care policies and methods for linking data across systems, and to develop collective expertise and resources for the field. The Consortium’s collaboration will support research capacity and learning within individual projects and across award recipients. Funding is subject to availability of funds and the best interests of the federal government.

This cooperative agreement would establish a Center for Home-based Child Care Research to support research about home-based child care (HBCC) in states, territories, This cooperative agreement would establish a Center for Home-based Child Care Research to support research about home-based child care (HBCC) in states, territories, tribes, and/or local community contexts. The purpose of the Center is to provide leadership, build research capacity in the field, and offer support in the development and facilitation of local research to improve understanding of HBCC settings and providers as well as access by the families who seek and utilize HBCC. This research center would promote sound research examining HBCC supply and the factors that support or suppress the availability of HBCC in communities. In addition, this Center would advance the field’s understanding of HBCC engagement in public programs and quality improvement efforts. The Center’s activities would build research and evaluation capacity in the field and support research in states, territories, and/or tribes that could inform local initiatives designed to sustain and strengthen HBCC.HBCC providers, or individuals and small business owners paid to provide child care in private residences or homes, are an essential segment of the child care landscape. They constitute the largest portion of the child care and early education (CCEE) workforce and serve the vast majority of children birth through school-age who are in regular nonparental care. It is critical for the Administration for Children and Families and for local communities to learn more about HBCC providers, both the individuals providing the care and the characteristics of the programs where they provide child care, in order to inform federal efforts and state, territory, tribal and/or local initiatives to increase access to safe and high-quality child care particularly for families with lower-incomes and working families. The Center would promote sound research examining HBCC and the factors that support or suppress the availability of HBCC in states, territories, and/or tribes. In addition, this Center would advance the field’s understanding of HBCC providers’ engagement in publicly funded programs (e.g., child care subsidies, Head Start) and quality improvement efforts (e.g., Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS), quality initiatives (QI), and continuous quality improvement (CQI) initiatives). The Center’s activities would build research and evaluation capacity in the field and support research in state, territories and/or tribes that could inform local initiatives designed to sustain and strengthen the supply of HBCC. This Center would ideally bring together a team that has experience investigating HBCC, evaluating Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) program and policies, and assessing the needs and experiences of families with lower-incomes, in tribal communities, and of historically marginalized populations. This Center would be equipped to strengthen the ability of local research partnerships to conduct model research projects that effectively address questions concerning HBCC in local contexts, while contributing to broader understanding in the field about HBCC.