HHS-2024-ACF-ACYF-CZ-0066_PUBLISHED.pdf

Administration for Children and Families

Administration on Children, Youth, and Families - Children's Bureau

National Legal and Judicial Child Welfare Center for Innovation and Advancement

HHS-2024-ACF-ACYF-CZ-0066

Application Due Date: 07/02/2024

Table of Contents Executive Summary

I. Program Description

II. Federal Award Information

III. Eligibility Information

III.1. Eligible Applicants

III.2. Cost Sharing or Matching

III.3. Other

IV. Application and Submission Information

IV.1. Address to Request Application Package

IV.2. Content and Form of Application Submission

Required Forms, Assurances, and Certifications

The Project Description

The Project Budget and Budget Justification

Application Submission Options

IV.3. Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) and System for Award Management (SAM)

IV.4. Submission Dates and Times

Explanation of Due Dates

Acknowledgement of Received Application

IV.5. Intergovernmental Review

IV.6. Funding Restrictions

IV.7. Other Submission Requirements

V. Application Review Information

V.1. Criteria

V.2. Review and Selection Process

V.3. Anticipated Announcement and Federal Award Dates

VI. Federal Award Administration Information

VI.1. Federal Award Notices

VI.2. Administrative and National Policy Requirements

VI.3. Reporting

VII. HHS Award Agency Contact(s)

VIII. Other Information

Reference Websites

Application Checklist

Appendix

Funding Opportunity Title:

National Legal and Judicial Child Welfare Center for Innovation and Advancement Announcement Type:

Initial Funding Opportunity Number:

HHS-2024-ACF-ACYF-CZ-0066

Assistance Listing Number:

93.670,93.652 Due Date for Applications:

07/02/2024

Executive Summary Notice:

• Applicants are strongly encouraged to read the entire notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) carefully and observe the application formatting requirements listed in Section IV.2. Content and Form of Application Submission. For more information on applying for an award, please visit "Applying for an ACF Award" at https://www.acf.hhs.gov/grants/how-apply-grant.

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.

I. Program Description

Statutory Authority Child Abuse and Neglect Discretionary Activities - Title I, Section 105(b)(5) of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (42 U.S.C. 5106(b)(5)) Adoption Opportunities - Title II, Section 203(b)(4) of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Adoption Reform Act of 1978 (42 U.S.C. 5113(b)(4))

Description

BACKGROUND

https://www.acf.hhs.gov/grants/how-apply-grant

Scope of Need

Judges, attorneys, and other legal system staff play critical roles in the child welfare system. This includes the engagement of children, youth, and families, as well as the child welfare workforce.

The role also includes oversight and advocacy around removal and return decisions; application of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), and reasonable and active efforts by the agency;

advocacy in case planning and assisting in the resolution of a variety of issues that may be implicated in the child welfare sphere. High-quality legal and judicial practices are necessary to ensure we have an effective and fair child welfare system.

To empower improvements around those key roles, Congress established CIP in the 1990s. The CIP is the Children's Bureau (CB) primary funding dedicated to the legal and judicial community. This program funds states1and tribes to assess legal, judicial, and court practices and implement improvements around safety, permanency, well-being, and due process. Currently, all states, Washington D.C.; Puerto Rico; the U.S. Virgin Islands; and eight tribes have CIPs. The CIPs need coordinated support to maximize their potential. There is also a need for TA for the broader child welfare system including for judges, attorneys, and other court staff. This includes attorneys for agencies, children, parents, and kin, including for tribes in tribal courts or ICWA cases. It includes legal team professionals such as social workers or peer mentors on parent or youth attorney teams.

The legal and judicial attention needed also varies across cases in different stages or with different goals such as prevention, reunification, adoption, other permanency goals, and even post-permanency supports. Regarding prevention specifically, though historically many judges and attorneys were not involved in child welfare unless a child was removed, this has been changing over recent years with many jurisdictions being more and more active in secondary prevention. Notably, many states and tribes who are now participating in Independent Legal Representation under Title IV-E[2] included candidates for foster care in their plans. Though placement in foster care is sometimes necessary, much more can be done on the legal and judicial front to ensure it is only done when necessary, and the legal and judicial community has an important role in ensuring this.

Judges and attorneys are the professionals most expressly tasked with ensuring due process in child welfare. Though roles differ from counsel for the agency, parents, children/youth, and judges, they must share in appreciating the gravity of child welfare - a system that dramatically impacts the long-term impact of trauma, the trajectory of people’s lives from permanency to well-being, and important cultural and relational connections. While any area of law can be impactful, focus on due process in this sphere safeguards some of the most important connections in the lives of children and families.

The gravity makes it imperative that families are engaged in the processes because families are the best experts on their unique strengths and needs. Understanding and improving this at a systemic level requires understanding the entire context of what happened; what the professionals did (judges, attorneys, agency); how the child, youth, parent, or relative experienced it; and what is needed in response and support of the child's needs.[3]

In all, the topical and audience scope of the need for legal and judicial roles in child welfare must be focused but not unduly narrow.

Collaboration & Partnerships

With these unique roles in mind, it is important to view the legal community as pieces of a greater puzzle to meet the needs of families in child welfare. State CIPs have requirements around collaboration with the child welfare agency, local courts, and tribes, where applicable.

State CIPs are key system partners in supporting the Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSR).[4] Tribal CIPs likewise must collaborate with the child welfare agency and local courts where applicable.

Beyond those requirements, courts benefit from collaboration and partnership with a wider array of individuals. Some other partners recommended in the CIP Program Instructions include Court Appointed Special Advocates, other CB grants in the state such as the Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention lead, key service providers, department of education representatives, ICWA specialists, and parents and youth with lived experience in the child welfare system.[5]

Likewise, technical assistance for courts must also be coordinated with related CB child welfare TA providers such as those supporting state and tribal agencies. Depending on the needs of the state or tribe, the need for collaboration and partnership may need to be broader, for example, including expertise on specific mental health and substance use areas of practice and resources.

With the many moving parts, to support alignment where appropriate, the CB regional offices (ROs) are well situated to understand the more holistic landscape. There is a need, therefore, for regular communication between the Center and the RO staff for the state and tribal courts.

Beyond even the sphere of child welfare, ultimately all child- and family-serving agencies can be an important part of understanding the needs of families and crafting solutions. Trends in CIP work over several years show more investment in holistic approaches. Technical assistance is needed to help CIPs and the legal and judicial community better integrate efforts with the broader child- and family-serving communities.

Equity

For many years in child welfare, efforts to address the safety, permanency, well-being, and due process rights of families have been disconnected from the root causes of systemic oppression.

Addressing systemic oppression, bias, and many other inequities must be foundational to truly address the challenges families face in the child welfare system. There is a paramount need for support to those charged with serving families and removing systemic barriers that perpetuate disproportionate minority representation and disparate outcomes for Black, Brown, and Indigenous children and families.

Across the federal government, agencies are assessing how to address systemic racial barriers to meet the needs of people of color. The Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government (EO 13985) sets racial equity as a critical priority. The Executive Order states:

“The Federal Government’s goal in advancing equity is to provide everyone with the opportunity to reach their full potential. Consistent with these aims, each agency must assess whether, and to what extent, its programs and policies perpetuate systemic barriers to opportunities and benefits for people of color and other underserved groups.”

The Executive Order on Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government (Executive Order 14058) prioritizes including the voices of those with demonstrated experience. The Executive Order states:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-order-advancing-racial-equity-and-support-for-underserved-communities-through-the-federal-government/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-order-advancing-racial-equity-and-support-for-underserved-communities-through-the-federal-government/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/12/13/executive-order-on-transforming-federal-customer-experience-and-service-delivery-to-rebuild-trust-in-government/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/12/13/executive-order-on-transforming-federal-customer-experience-and-service-delivery-to-rebuild-trust-in-government/

“Our government must recommit to being “of the people, by the people, [and] for the people to solve the complex 21st century challenges our Nation faces. The government must be held accountable for designing and delivering services with a focus on the actual experiences of the people whom it is meant to serve. Government must also work to deliver services more equitably and effectively, especially for those who have been historically underserved.”

ACF has a “commitment to addressing inequities and advancing equity through assessing and changing policies, programs, and processes across the Department. Additionally, ACF is working to shift the culture, resources, and approaches to institutionalize and sustain a focus on equity over time” (ACF Strategic Plan, 2022). In concert with the agency-wide efforts, the CB has established a new vision that centers our work on serving families with intentional equity.

Information about CB’s commitment to partnering with relevant groups to examine and improve child welfare and human service systems to yield more equitable outcomes for children and families is included within CB's Equity Statement. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/equity-statement

CB is committed to addressing disproportionality and disparity in child welfare for Black, American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN), Hispanic and Latino, and other impacted people of color; people who are LGBTQIA2S+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex, asexual, Two-Spirit, or other gender or sexual identity); those who experience poverty; and other populations who historically have experienced disproportionality and disparity in the Nation’s child welfare systems.

Disproportionality and disparity for children and youth of color is a grave concern in child welfare. Over 50 years of data demonstrate that Black, AI/AN, and Hispanic children are over-represented and have disparate outcomes throughout the child welfare process, including investigations, entry into out-of-home care, and exits from care. It is critical to understand that true meaningful change must begin with the acknowledgment that the child welfare system is functioning as it was designed as it was built on dominant cultural norms and true system transformation will require us to dismantle and challenge policies and practices at all levels.

CB has prioritized halting the adverse effects of disproportionality and disparities on these populations by using a lens of equity and intersectionality. Intersectionality is a framework for understanding how each person’s multiple identities (e.g., race, gender, sexuality) influence the way an individual experiences the world and is seen by the world. It requires recognizing we are all multifaceted people with multiple identities that affect the discrimination and privilege we experience.

CB has established four priority areas through which it wants to thread equity:

• Preventing children from entering foster care

• Supporting kin caregivers

• Ensuring youth leave care with strengthened relationships, holistic support, and opportunities

• Developing and enhancing the child welfare workforce

Continuous Quality Improvement

Child welfare courts in the United States have made strides in the last decade in investing in qualitative and quantitative data. As seen through annual CIP Self-Assessments and a recent literature review,[6] more jurisdictions are gathering more and more types of data than ever.

https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/equity-statement

However, child welfare courts still lag behind many other fields as far as the regularized orientation to the scientific method. The landscape of these gains is often in the form of pilots, limited areas within states, and not part of routine practice in states and tribes. Effective child welfare legal and judicial strategies are also an understudied area.[7]

As a community, we recently made a big leap in streamlining paths to gathering data with the development of the Judicial, Court, and Attorney Measures of Performance (JCAMP) in 2022.[8] Interwoven with legal and judicial practice, JCAMP offers guidance and tools that help address due process; family engagement[9]; and experience, equity, collaboration, and the role of lived experience. While JCAMP has already catalyzed increased data collection and use, as a relatively new resource, it still needs continued support.

Innovation & Advancement

With these many needs in mind, there is an overall need for planning for innovation and advancement. In this context, it is important to consider the tiers of potential support for innovation and advancement from national, to state/tribe level, to local area, to individual participants. CIPs serve a state/tribe-level role as grants designed for assessing and implementing improvements. Individual practitioners and the clients they serve are of course the targets we intend as the ultimate actors and beneficiaries of this work. Deliberate structures to make space for innovation and advancement are needed at all levels. A national hub for innovation and advancement is needed to promote innovation and advancement at those levels, to share what we learn, to overall serve as the hub of a layered learning community, and to support innovation itself. While Center staff, given the above roles, are naturally well situated to be a hub of the more resonant and common patterns of need in the child welfare legal field, these overall structures may steer the broader Center work away from truly cutting-edge realms. For example, full-time staff could each have 5 or 10 percent of their time to pursue research or efforts to fill novel or emerging gaps in knowledge, skills, or resources that are in line with the overall purposes of the Center.

Conclusion

Taking all these needs into account, there is a need for a central national provider to build the capacity of individuals and organizations through a variety of TA including:

• Tailored: typically intended to increase the knowledge and skills of individuals and to foster improvements in organizational and system capacity, tailored to the unique needs and conditions within a specific CIP or child welfare legal system. Tailored TA varies in degree of intensity based on the needs of the jurisdiction but should be designed to move a CIP toward achieving its program improvement goals.

• Targeted: typically intended to increase the knowledge and skills of constituents on a topic or in a specific aspect of child welfare practice. A major component of this will be training, coaching, and peer networking activities. Targeted TA may also attempt to foster increased communication between professionals and build relationships and networks that will support learning and expand leadership abilities.

• Universal: typically intended to increase awareness understanding engagement, access, and/or use of a broad audience of professionals and others in the broader child welfare legal community as-a-whole. Universal TA activities include, but are not limited to, the following: reviewing and distilling research, gathering and organizing information and resources, making information more accessible for broader consumption, developing products and tools, and strategically disseminating information to the general public or target audiences.

PROJECT ACTIVITIES

Purpose

The overall purpose of the Center is to improve outcomes for children, youth, and families through improvements in child welfare legal and judicial practice.

CIPs are intended to serve as leadership for child welfare legal and judicial matters in their states/tribes. As such, CIPs will be the primary driver of TA offered under this project. This includes that CIPs will be both primary direct recipients of TA but also direct TA to other needed audiences such as attorneys for agencies, children, parents, kin, tribes in ICWA cases, other court and attorney team members, and other wider participants where the need to improve the legal practice is more multidisciplinary.

The scope of this TA includes the full array of prevention to post-permanency supports. Though preventative legal advocacy in child welfare has not been the norm, the breadth and depth of CIP work in this area has increased over recent years. Further, many jurisdictions that have opted into the IV-E independent legal representation option have included candidates[10] for foster care in their coverage. Coupled with the need for innovation and advancement, the topical scope will likely entail areas that are still emerging areas of practice.

Given the critical role of the legal system in ensuring due process, this will be an important lens under the project across different types of TA. While this is in many ways so fundamental to legal practice it sometimes is not even expressly noted.

TA under this project will prioritize due process even in areas outside the audiences of more direct legal and judicial support. For example, a CFSR/JCAMP crosswalk[11] shows how connected due process is to broader child welfare outcomes of interest. The JCAMP guidance also recommends the inclusion of a “multidisciplinary performance measurement committee,” throughout the work.

With the different roles of the various types of attorneys and judges in child welfare, as well as potential peer or other supports, the topic of legal system family engagement is distinct from family engagement with the child welfare agency. However, including lived expertise from parents and youth that has experienced child welfare system and its legal systems is critical to innovation. TA under this project will support family engagement across the legal system roles described above.

For both due process and family engagement, JCAMP provides a road map for how these interrelate with other legal system measures.[12]

Collaborations & Partnerships

Though CIPs are the primary drivers of need and recipients on this project, there are crucial collaborations and partnerships this project will support. Many of these collaborations and partnerships involve diverse educational and work experiences and expertise. This project will support these efforts through deliberate engagement strategies that help ensure thorough, open, and constructive communication despite real or perceived power dynamics.

Collaborations and partnerships that will be supported include:

• CIP efforts with local legal and judicial communities

• State CIP efforts around ICWA and tribal engagement

• Tribal CIP efforts around engaging with states

• Tailored, targeted, and universal product work with other related CB-funded grants, including, but not limited to, those serving state and tribal child welfare agencies

• In addition to the Central Office (CO) role described below, the Center will regularly coordinate with Regional Office Program Specialists (ROPS) assigned to the state or tribe

• As to collaboration and coordination with other CB grants and the ROPS, this project will have a significant role in tailored, targeted, and universal efforts around the CFSR

• This project will also support collaboration with the wider child- and family-serving systems and networks as needs, opportunities, and priorities determine

Equity

This project will provide TA with a deliberate framework that equity considerations should be a part of all topical areas and in the overall approaches noted below such as CQI and evaluation.

Because there is a distinct legal landscape given the ICWA and government-to-government relationships with the federal government and sovereign tribes, special consideration is needed for ICWA and tribal work. The Center will support CIPs as they engage in ICWA work with CIPs engaged in ICWA efforts or other tribal collaboration and State-Tribal Partnerships to Implement Best Practices in Indian Child Welfare[13] grants (ICW Partnerships). It will also support TA to tribes with CIP grants.

With the purpose in mind, the Center will provide the following:

A. Staff Liaisons: Under the preceding cooperative agreement, staff liaisons served several integrated roles, as a liaison for each CIP to support collaboration and partnerships; as general child welfare subject-matter experts able to provide more common types of tailored TA; and as curators of other Center SMEs and resources of the Center more broadly. These liaisons were thus typically attorneys with significant expertise in children's welfare law. Based on prior demand, approximately 500 hours per year are anticipated of tailored direct virtual or in-person contact with TA recipients, with roughly the same number of hours of preparation and follow-up nationally. The TA is anticipated to be mostly virtual given the preferences of TA recipients. The Center will support a liaison model that continues to meet the needs described in Section I. Program Description, Project Activities, Purpose.

B. Staff SMEs: Individual SMEs will support the purposes of the Center. These may include individuals with backgrounds in other disciplines consistent with the above. For example, social workers or persons with lived experience who have expertise in family engagement.

C. Evaluation support: The Center will provide education and expertise in the evaluation of child welfare available to support tailored, targeted, and universal TA. This is independent of the evaluation of the Center, as described in Section I. Program Description, Project Activities, Evaluation.

D. Targeted Events: The Center will host regular constituency groups and learning experiences. These will be targeted toward CIPs or their designees, regional or local cohorts, or on specific topics relevant to child welfare legal and judicial practice. Some events will be held in conjunction with other listed collaborators and partners. These will generally be conducted under a community of practice approach or similar with substantial input and direction from participants. Based on prior demand and programming, it is estimated that approximately 50 events will be held yearly. It is estimated the average number of participants per event will be approximately 30–40 people. These calls will largely be virtual.

E. The Center should plan to support programmatic aspects of annual in-person regional or national CIP meetings. This should include travel for Center staff, planning, and facilitation, but not general meeting logistics or travel support for others.

F. Integration of Tailored, Targeted, and Universal: The Center should plan for how to leverage the different types of TA. Historically, for example, liaisons, evaluators, and SMEs also served roles in supporting targeted and universal TA to support natural feedback loops from the state/tribe specific to broader trends that inform targeted and universal TA. The Center will employ regular practices to support this integration.

G. Self-Assessment Data to Support Peer Learning: In concert with the activity noted under Innovation & Advancement, the Center will support the publication of annual CIP Self- Assessment data to advance peer connections and learning.

H. Facilitation Support: As support in tailored and targeted TA, the Center will maintain staff and/or develop the capacity of staff to use targeted facilitation techniques in in-person or virtual environments to support thorough, open, and constructive communication. This might include approaches such as human-centered design or liberating structures.

I. Local Court CQI Center will develop a universal product designed to help CIPs develop and manage local CQI efforts.

J. Legal and Judicial Roles in the CFSR: The Center will develop a synthesis providing an overview of successes and challenges in legal and judicial involvement in CFSR Round 4 and recommendations for improvements for the future that can be made to best meet shared broad system goals.

K. Equity Expertise: The Center will have or develop staff with expertise and experience around child welfare legal, judicial practice, and equity.

L. Tribal and ICWA Expertise: The Center will have or develop staff with expertise or experience in tribal child welfare who will serve as SME(s) for TA.

M. Internal Capacity Building on Equity: The Center will implement regular internal processes to support internal capacity building around advancing equity.

N. Internship Program: To support longer-term investment in advancing a diverse legal profession, this project will have a paid internship program for law school students. To leverage consonant curriculum, particular outreach should be made to historically Black colleges and universities, law schools with substantial Indian Law courses, law schools with curricula around the legal needs of recent immigrants, and law schools offering clinical experiences for underserved communities. The important role of persons with lived experience should also be included in outreach and advertisement.

O. Priority Area Universal Products: To support the four equity priority areas listed above, the Center will produce four universal products throughout the project.

P. Civil Legal Representation and Prevention: The Center will develop a universal product on approaches to using broader civil legal representation to prevent unnecessary placements in foster care.

Q. Legal Representation Needs of Kin: The Center will develop a universal product detailing the national needs and strategies for legal representation for kin caregivers for children and youth in foster care.

R. Legal Needs of Older Youth: The Center will develop a universal product on the legal needs of older youth in foster care and strategies for improvement.

S. Legal Workforce: The Center will develop a universal product detailing the needs and recommended approaches to support quality recruitment and retention of attorneys, judges, and other legal system professionals, including peer mentors with lived experience in child welfare law. This will have a particular focus on needs and strategies for a diverse workforce. This will include tribal legal workforce including around ICWA.

Continuous Quality Improvement

After an in-depth examination of scientific method-based approaches to system change was undertaken by the CB and a wide-array of partners, the CQI approach was adopted.

CQI Phases include:

Identifying and Assessing Needs – This phase is the earliest in the process, the team identifies a need to be addressed. The assessing needs phase includes identifying the need, determining if available data is demonstrating that this is a problem, and forming teams to address the issue.

Develop a theory of change—This phase focuses on theorizing the causes of a problem. In this phase, you would identify what you think might be causing the problem and develop a “theory of change”. The theory of change is essentially how you think your activities (or intervention) will improve outcomes.

Develop/select solution—This phase includes developing or selecting a solution. In this phase, you might be exploring potential best practices or evidence-based practices that you may want to implement as a solution to the identified need. You might also be developing a specific training, program, or practice that you want to implement.

Implementation – the implementation phase of work is when an intervention is being piloted or tested. This includes adapting programs or practices to meet your needs and developing implementation supports.

Evaluation/assessment – the evaluation and assessment phase includes any efforts to collect data about the fidelity (process measures: was it implemented as planned?) or effectiveness (outcome measures: is the intervention making a difference?) of the project. The evaluation assessment phase also includes post-evaluation efforts to apply findings, such as making changes to the program/practice and using the data to inform the next steps.

CQI will be an overall framework for service delivery to states and tribes in the areas described under the Purpose. CQI will also be applied to the Center and its activities. Modifications of this approach may be made as needed when working with tribal CIPs or on ICWA or tribal collaboration efforts.

Innovation & Advancement

The Center will serve as a national hub for innovation and advancement to support learning across the child welfare legal community at national jurisdictional and local levels. Liaisons, SMEs, and evaluators should be regularly engaged in discussions or through other tasks to leverage their experiences in tailored and targeted work streams to notice emerging patterns of need and strategies.

Considering the CQI and Innovation & Advancement approaches, the Center will:

1. Develop annual profiles of legal and judicial strategies that demonstrate promising strategies and results.

2. Aggregate and use annual quantitative and qualitative CIP Self-Assessment data.

3. Employ regular CQI-based review of TA data and discussions and incorporate targeted internal capacity-building efforts where needs arise for liaisons, SMEs, and evaluators.

4. Develop a simple strategic plan for discussion with CB and support annual updates.

5. Maintain a CIP library that was created under the prior cooperative agreement

(CIPShare). This should include identifying new items developed by CIPs that will be useful to add to the library and a plan for staff with expertise in file-run software.

6. Support time for individual staff members to fill novel or emerging gaps in knowledge, skills, or resources that are in line with the overall purposes of the Center but not in areas that have arisen as a broader need

Evaluation

The Center will conduct an ongoing independent evaluation of tailored and targeted TA. The Center must conduct its center-specific evaluation activities throughout the project period to measure process and outcomes. The Center will regularly evaluate its performance including the achievement of project objectives, satisfaction, accessibility, usability, participation, reach, use, increased knowledge, skills, and other outcomes. Center-specific evaluation findings will be used to produce ongoing documentation of project activities and results. The center-specific evaluation must include performance feedback and periodic assessment of program progress to improve its processes and services, as necessary, and serve as a basis for program adjustments.

The Center will design and conduct an evaluation that is guided by the project's strategic plan and uses multiple measures, employing both qualitative and quantitative methods. Center-specific evaluation findings are expected to be substantive, highlighting project strengths, challenges, and outcomes.

With those evaluation needs, the Center will:

A. Evaluation Plan: An overall evaluation plan to document project activities, results, and appropriate data sources. This should include all types of TA provided.

B. TA Tracker: In the first year, develop a tracking system for tailored and targeted TA. This should include quantitative and qualitative data points covering the topics and individuals described in Section I. Program Description, Project Activities, Purpose, Equity, Collaboration, and Partnerships. It should enable regular and ad hoc extracts and reporting.

C. Regular CQI Use: The center-specific evaluation information should regularly be shared and discussed with Center staff.

D. Coordination with other Evaluations: The Center will coordinate evaluation activities with other Centers including those designed to support capacity building for state and tribal child welfare agencies. Other Center evaluation plans and approaches will also be developed alongside this grant. Thus, some aspects are unknown. However, the Center should anticipate that there will be regular discussions of the center-specific plans across Centers and that it will attempt to align evaluation approaches where beneficial considering the cost, and regularly share findings to help support overall TA coordination across CB providers.

E. Center Evaluation Staff: The Center should have staff with appropriate expertise to support the evaluation. These staff should have appropriate experience in successfully collecting and managing data, designing appropriate performance measurements, interpreting data, and applying data-derived information to program quality improvement. These staff should be separated in the organizational structure of the Center to support independent evaluation.

They should also be separate individuals from the Evaluator(s) providing TA described in Section I. Program Description, Project Activities, Purpose.

PROJECT ASSURANCES

The applicant’s signature on the application constitutes the recipient's assurance that it will comply with the following requirements:

• Have the project fully functioning within 90 days following notification of the award.

• Electronically submit the final program/evaluation report and any program products to

CB within 90 days of the project end date.

• Within 3 months after the award, the project director, child welfare liaison (if different from the Project Director), evaluator, and/or other key staff must attend a 2-day kick-off meeting in Washington, DC.

• The project director, the Child Welfare Agency Liaison (if different from the project director), and the evaluator and/or other key staff must attend the annual grantee meeting, usually held in the spring, in Washington, DC.

SUBAWARDS

Recipients under this program may opt to transfer a portion of substantive programmatic work to other organizations through subaward(s). The prime recipient must maintain a substantive role in the project. ACF defines a substantive role as conducting activities and/or providing services funded under the award that are necessary and integral to the completion of the project.

Subrecipient monitoring activities alone, as specified in 45 CFR 75.352, do not constitute a substantive role. Furthermore, ACF does not fund awards where the role of the applicant is primarily to serve as a conduit for passing funds to other organizations unless that arrangement is authorized by statute. Subrecipient(s) must meet the eligibility requirements identified in the NOFO, Section III.1. Eligible Applicants. Additionally, all subrecipient(s) must obtain a Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) number assigned by the System for Award Management (SAM), if they do not already have one. Prime recipients are required to check the SAM to verify that the subrecipient(s) is/are not debarred, suspended, or ineligible. Please reference the Award Term and Condition on Subawards on the ACF Administrative and National Policy Requirements website for further requirements involving subawards.

II. Federal Award Information

Funding Instrument Type:

CA (Cooperative Agreement) Estimated Total Funding:

$3,000,000 Expected Number of Awards:

Award Ceiling:

$3,000,000 Per Budget Period

Award Floor:

$2,750,000 Per Budget Period

Average Projected Award Amount:

$3,000,000 Per Budget Period

Anticipated Project Start Date:

09/30/2024 Length of Project Periods:

60-month project period with five 12-month budget periods

Additional Information on Project Periods and Explanation of 'Other' Additional Information on Awards:

Awards made under this funding opportunity are subject to the availability of federal funds.

Applications requesting an award amount that exceeds the Award Ceiling per budget period, or per project period, as stated in this section, will be disqualified from the merit review and funding under this funding opportunity. Please see Section III.3. Other, Application Disqualification Factors.

The project award is for a project period of 60 months including the initial award for a 12-month budget period. After a satisfactory initial budget period, the award of continuation for each 12 months will be subject to availability of funds, satisfactory progress on the part of the recipient, and a determination that continued funding would be in the Federal Government's best interest.

Funds for this project are authorized separately as indicated here:

There is $7 million authorized under title II, section 203(b)(4) of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Adoption Reform Act (42 U.S.C. 5113(b)(4)), Adoption Opportunities. Eligible activities include, but are not limited to, increasing legal and judicial capacities to ensure timely and meaningful permanency for children and youth in foster care. Such efforts include eliminating barriers to adoption caused by court delays; missing or inadequate judicial determinations; lack of adequate counsel for children, parents, and child welfare agencies; and other legal and judicial challenges or barriers to timely and sustainable permanency for children and families.

There is $1.3 million authorized under title I, section 105(b)(5) of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (42 U.S.C. 5106(b)(5)), Child Abuse and Neglect Discretionary Activities.

Eligible activities include, but are not limited to, ensuring that judges and attorneys have the skills and knowledge necessary to ensure the safety, permanency, and well-being of children;

and providing training and learning opportunities, best practice resources, and research on legal and judicial practice to help meet the needs of children and parents involved with the child welfare system to lessen the likelihood that maltreatment will occur.

Funds must be spent in a manner consistent with their authorized activities. The recipient must separately track the funds and their associated activities and costs for Adoption Opportunities and Child Abuse and Neglect Discretionary Activities. The recipient will develop a tracking system that outlines activities and costs by line item and per funding stream. Throughout this project, the recipient must be ready to account for the activities and expenditures attributed to each of these funding portions.

Description of ACF's Anticipated Substantial Involvement Under the Cooperative Agreement Award

CB anticipates that federal agency involvement will produce programmatic benefits to the recipient otherwise unavailable to them for carrying out the project. The involvement and collaboration include:

• CB review and approval of planning stages of the activities before implementation phases may begin;

• CB and recipient collaboration in the performance of key programmatic activities (i.e., strategic planning, implementation, information technology enhancements, training and technical assistance (T/TA), publications or products, and evaluation);

• Close monitoring by CB of the requirements stated in this announcement that limit the recipient's discretion concerning the scope of services offered; and

• Close monitoring by CB during performance which may, to ensure compliance with the intent of this funding, exceed those federal stewardship responsibilities customary for grant activities.

• Consistent with the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) of 1995, (44 U.S.C. 3501-3521) CB will not conduct or sponsor-and a person is not required to respond to a collection of information covered by such Act, unless it displays a currently valid Office of Management and Budget (OMB) control number.

III. Eligibility Information

III.1. Eligible Applicants Eligibility is open to the following: states, Indian tribes or tribal organizations, public agencies, private agencies, or organizations (or combinations of such entities).

Applications from individuals (including sole proprietorships) and foreign entities are not eligible and will be disqualified from the merit review and funding under this funding opportunity. See Section III.3. Other, Application Disqualification Factors.

Faith-based and community organizations that meet the eligibility requirements are eligible to receive awards under this funding opportunity. Faith-based organizations may apply for this award on the same basis as any other organization, as set forth at and, subject to the protections and requirements of 45 CFR Part 87 and 42 U.S.C. 2000bb et seq., ACF will not, in the selection of recipients, discriminate against an organization on the basis of the organization's religious character, affiliation, or exercise.

Reference to Legal Status See Section IV.2. Legal Status of Applicant Entity for documentation required to support eligibility.

III.2. Cost Sharing or Matching

Cost Sharing / Matching Requirement:

No See Section IV.2. The Project Budget and Budget Justification, Commitment of Non-Federal Resources for more information.

III.3. Other

Application Disqualification Factors Applications from individuals (including sole proprietorships) and foreign entities are not eligible and will be disqualified from the merit review and funding under this funding opportunity.

Award Ceiling Disqualification

Applications that request an award amount that exceeds the Award Ceiling per budget period or per project period, as stated in Section II. Federal Award Information, will be disqualified from the merit review and funding under this funding opportunity. This disqualification applies only to the Award Ceiling listed for the first 12-month budget period for projects with multiple budget periods. If the project and budget period are the same, the disqualification applies to the Award Ceiling listed for the project period.

Required Electronic Application Submission

ACF requires electronic submission of applications at Grants.gov. Paper applications received that have not been approved for an exemption from required electronic submission will be disqualified from the merit review and funding under this funding opportunity.

If you do not have an internet connection or sufficient capacity to upload large documents to the internet you may contact ACF for an exemption that will allow you to submit your application in paper format. Information and the requirements for requesting an exemption from required electronic application submission are found in "ACF Policy for Requesting an Exemption from Electronic Application Submission."

Missing the Application Deadline (Late Applications)

The deadline for electronic application submission is 11:59 pm ET on the due date listed in the Overview and in Section IV.4. Submission Dates and Times. Electronic applications submitted to Grants.gov after 11:59 pm ET on the due date, as indicated by a dated and time-stamped email from Grants.gov, will be disqualified from the merit review and funding under this funding opportunity.

Applications submitted to Grants.gov which fail their validation check, will not be received at, or acknowledged by ACF. If you submit an application for the same NOFO more than once, only the last on-time submission will be acknowledged.

Paper applications with an approved exemption from the electronic submission requirement must be received by 4:30 pm ET on the due date listed in the Overview and in Section IV.4. Submission Dates and Times. Paper applications received after 4:30 pm ET on the due date will be disqualified from the merit review and funding under this funding opportunity.

Notification of Application Disqualification Applicants will be notified of a disqualification determination by email or by USPS postal mail within 30 federal business days from the closing date of this NOFO.

IV. Application and Submission Information

IV.1. Address to Request Application Package CB Operations Center

C/O LCG, INC.

ATTN: HHS-2024-ACF-ACYF-CZ-0066

6000 Executive Blvd.

Suite 410 Rockville

MD

20852 888-203-6161 cb@grantreview.org Application Packages

Electronic Application Submission:

https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ACF_Policy_for_Requesting_an_Exemption_from_Required_Electronic_FINAL_0.pdf https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ACF_Policy_for_Requesting_an_Exemption_from_Required_Electronic_FINAL_0.pdf

The electronic application submission package is available in the NOFO's listing at Grants.gov.

IV.2. Content and Form of Application Submission

FORMATTING APPLICATION SUBMISSIONS

Notice of Two-File Requirement Applicants applying via Grants.gov must upload only two electronic files, excluding Standard Forms (SFs) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB)-approved forms. Additional files will be removed prior to the merit review.

FOR ALL APPLICATIONS:

Signature of Authorized Organization Representative (AOR) Each applicant must designate an authorized organization representative (AOR) with authority to act on the organization’s behalf on matters related to the application submission and administration of awards. The AOR signature must appear on all forms in which a signature is required. By signing, the AOR agrees the organization will abide by all applicable Federal statutes, regulations and terms and conditions of the award.

Accepted Font Style and Size Applications must be in Times New Roman 12-point font, except for footnotes, which may be 10-point font. Pages that contain blurred or illegible text will be removed.

If documents must be scanned, the font size on any scanned documents must be large enough so that it is readable. You may not scan more than one page of a documents onto a single page.

Pages with blurred text will be removed from the application.

English Language Applications must be submitted in the English language and must be in the terms of United States (U.S.) dollars. See 45 CFR §75.111 for more information.

Page Limitations You must observe the page limitation(s) listed under "PAGE LIMITATIONS AND CONTENT FOR ALL SUBMISSION FORMATS" later in this section. Page limitation(s) do not include SFs and OMB-approved forms.

All applications must be double-spaced. An application that exceeds the cited page limitation for double-spaced pages will have extra pages removed, and those pages will not be reviewed.

Application Elements Exempted from Double-Spacing Requirements The following elements of the application submission are exempt from the double-spacing requirements and may be single-spaced:

• Table of Contents

• One-page Project Summary

• Required Assurances and Certifications

• SFs and OMB-approved forms

• Resumes, Logic Models, Proof of Legal Status/Non-Profit Status, Third-Party

Agreements, Letters of Support, footnotes and tables

• Line-Item Budget and/or the Budget Justification

Adherence to NOFO Formatting, Font, and Page Limitation Requirements Applications that fail to adhere to ACF’s NOFO formatting, font, and page limitation requirements will be adjusted by the removal of page(s) from the application. Pages will be removed before the merit review and will not be made available to reviewers.

NOTE: Applicants failing to adhere to ACF’s NOFO formatting, font, and page limitation requirements will receive a letter from ACF notifying them that their application was amended.

The letter will be sent after awards have been issued and will specify the reason(s) for removal of page(s).

Corrections/Updates to Submitted Applications When applicants revise a previously submitted…