Deadline: 18 July 2018
Administration for Children and Families (ACYF) is seeking applications for its grant program entitled “Strengthening Child Welfare Systems to Achieve Expected Child and Family Outcomes.”
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.
Funding Information
- Estimated Total Program Funding: $8,050,000
- Award Ceiling: $1,610,000
- Award Floor: $1,000,000
Eligibility Criteria
- Nonprofits that do not have a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education
- Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments)
- State governments
- County governments
- Private institutions of higher education
- Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities
- Small businesses
- Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized)
- Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education
- Independent school districts
- Special district governments
- For profit organizations other than small businesses
- Public and State controlled institutions of higher education
- City or township governments
How to Apply
Applications must be submitted electronically via given website.
For more information, please visit grants.gov.
