National Center on Child Maltreatment Fatality Data Practices and Reporting (US)

Deadline: 19-Mar-25

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) Children’s Bureau (CB) has launched its applications for the National Center on Child Maltreatment Fatality Data Practices and Reporting to recognize every child who dies as a result of child abuse or neglect represents an irreversible and deep trauma to families and communities.

The purpose of this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is to establish, by cooperative agreement, the National Center on Child Maltreatment Fatality Data Practices (the National Center) to improve data collection and reporting about child maltreatment fatalities. Effective cross-agency coordination and understanding of child maltreatment fatality data can help states collect comprehensive data. States, jurisdictions, and their partners, including tribes, can use that information to develop cross-agency prevention, intervention, and system reform efforts. The National Center will make and carry out a plan to provide culturally responsive T/TA to states, jurisdictions, and their partners, including tribes.

Objectives

• To meet its goals across Phases I and II, the National Center will focus on the objectives in the following subsections:
  • Build knowledge and capacity: The National Center will increase the knowledge, skills, and capacity of states, jurisdictions, and their partners including tribes. They expect this objective to involve:
    • Assessing how comprehensive the child maltreatment fatality data collected and reported to NCANDS is.
    • Determining effective and sustainable data analytic strategies for use in programmatic decision-making, reform, and training.
    • Identifying effective models of training and collaboration related to child maltreatment fatalities for use in child abuse prevention and child welfare.
    • Identifying critical factors known to support or hinder strategies for system reform related to child maltreatment fatalities.
    • Determining effective strategies for using available child maltreatment fatality data during critical junctures in child welfare practice.
    • Assessing the use of system response efforts, such as safety science, to intervene in child maltreatment fatalities.
  • Increase cross-agency cooperation and coordination: The National Center will increase opportunities for collaboration among child welfare agencies and their partners involved in collecting, reporting, analyzing, and responding to child maltreatment fatality data. They expect this objective to include:
    • Convening an interdisciplinary group of national experts to help set goals and priorities for the National Center and define research, practice, and policy issues.
    • Developing and maintaining partnerships with state, local, federal agencies, and their partners involved in child maltreatment fatalities to create networks of services and resources to improve data collection, reporting, and overall multi-agency response. These partners may include, but are not limited to:
      • National, state, tribal, and local agencies involved in the identification, reporting, analysis or response to child maltreatment fatalities.
      • Children’s Bureau Central and Regional Office Staff.
      • National Child Welfare Center for Innovation and Advancement.
      • Child Welfare Information Gateway.
      • NCANDS Technical Team.
    • Developing and maintaining opportunities for peers to share learning and strategies across states, jurisdictions, and their partners including tribes.
    • Engaging in national discussions to inform needs and opportunities related to collecting, analyzing, and responding to child maltreatment fatality data.
    • Contributing to research and evaluation of child maltreatment fatality circumstances, opportunities for intervention, and system reform such as implementation of safety science.
    • Enhancing coordination and collaboration across multiple agencies involved in child maltreatment fatality intervention and response.
  • Establish a national resource for information-sharing, learning, and dissemination: The National Center will increase awareness, availability, and accessibility of new knowledge developed and disseminate effective strategies and T/TA resources to states, jurisdictions, and their partners including tribes. They expect this objective to include:
    • Forming and maintaining a consortium and information-sharing network across states and jurisdictions, and their partners including tribes.
    • Disseminating new or existing culturally responsive products, findings, and relevant resources.
    • Making information about effective child maltreatment fatality data collection, reporting, analysis, and response, such as safety science, more accessible.
    • Providing guidance on strategies to enhance coordination and collaboration across multiple agencies.
  • Support data practice and reporting strategies: The National Center will provide universal, specialized, and tailored training and technical assistance to states and jurisdictions related to child maltreatment fatality data collection and reporting, analysis, and system response. They expect this T/TA to include, but not be limited to:
    • Helping states and jurisdictions identify and use successful strategies to collect reliable and valid child maltreatment fatality data at the local, state, and federal levels.
    • Identifying and using qualitative and quantitative analytic strategies to help states, jurisdictions, and their partners, including tribes, analyze child fatality information.
    • Developing documentation and technical assistance tools to help replicate:
      • Cross-agency partnerships.
      • Data collection innovations.
      • Methodological or analytic designs.
      • Policy and practice changes.
      • Evaluations.
      • System response, such as safety science.
      • Improving the workforce’s ability to identify and support families who are at risk of a child maltreatment fatality.
  • Evaluate training and technical assistance activities: The National Center must devote a minimum of 15% of grant funds to evaluation and continuous quality improvement (CQI) activities. The National Center must be able to objectively evaluate how it carries out its T/TA activities and whether it achieves its goals through sufficient in-house capacity or provide a plan to contract with a third-party evaluator, university, or college. The evaluation will:
    • Be supported by a logic model.
    • Assess progress towards the National Center’s objectives.
    • Include a valid and reliable measurement plan and sound methodological design.
    • Outline strategies to collect, manage, share, and analyze data.
    • Describe how data will inform improvement of funded activities.

Focus Areas

• CB seeks to create the National Center on Child Maltreatment Fatality Data Practices and Reporting (the National Center) to provide relevant training and technical assistance (T/TA) to state and jurisdictional child welfare agencies and their partners including tribes. The National Center will enhance CB’s understanding of child maltreatment fatalities through:
  • Enhanced data collection.
  • Strategic cross-agency coordination, collaboration, data-sharing activities, data linkage, and analysis.
  • Strategic communication.
  • Using information gathered to collaborate across systems and develop meaningful approaches to preventing child maltreatment fatalities.
• The National Center will offer a combination of training, consultation, and coaching in the following three areas:
  • Universal technical assistance
  • Improve national child maltreatment fatality data collection and reporting, analysis, and system reform through:
    • Summarizing research.
    • Increasing opportunities for cross-agency collaboration and cooperation.
    • Making information more accessible.
    • Developing products and tools.
  • Specialized technical assistance
    • Increase knowledge of specific topics related to child maltreatment fatality data collection and reporting, analysis, and system reform through cohort-specific technical assistance.
  • Tailored technical assistance
    • Increase the knowledge and skills of individual states, jurisdictions, and their partners, including tribes, through training, consultation, and coaching.

Funding Information

• Estimated Total Program Funding: $1,250,000
• Award Ceiling: $1,250,000
• Award Floor: $1,250,000

Eligibility Criteria

• These types of organizations are eligible for an award:
  • States.
  • Indian tribes and tribal organizations.
  • Public or private agencies.
  • Combinations of these entities.
  • Individuals, including sole proprietorships, and foreign entities are not eligible.

Ineligibility Criteria

• They will review your application to make sure it meets these responsiveness requirements.
• They won’t consider an application that:
  • Requests funding above the award ceiling.
  • Is from an individual, including a sole proprietorship, or a foreign entity.
  • Is received in paper format that didn’t have a previously approved exemption from ACF.

For more information, visit Grants.gov.