PreApplication Teleconference Transcript HHS-2023-ACL-AOA-CGPS-0058.docx

Advancing Aging Network Capacity to Recognize and Support Family, Kinship and Tribal Caregivers

Funding Opportunity Number: HHS-2023-ACL-AOA-CGPS-0058

Pre-Application Teleconference Transcript & Recording May 4, 2023

Moderator: Greg Link

This transcript has been edited for readability and clarity

Click here for recording.

Coordinator: Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. During today's Q&A session, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star then 1. Today's call is also being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn today's meeting over to your host, Mr. Greg Link. Thank you. You may begin.

Greg Link: Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome everyone to this teleconference to review and discuss the 2023 Notice of Funding Opportunity entitled Advancing Aging Network Capacity to Recognize and Support Family Kinship and Tribal Caregivers. The purpose of this call is to provide interested applicants with an overview of the program announcement and provide an opportunity for you all to ask questions, to get clarification on any any questions you have prior to starting work on your applications.

Please note that following this teleconference it is unlikely that I, or others here at ACL, will be permitted or able to answer individual questions of applicants, as this could afford an unfair advantage to those not privy to the questions and the answers. So it's in your best interest today to ask your questions at the end of my overview. As [the operator] mentioned, my name is Greg Link, and I'm the Director of ACL's Office of Supportive and Caregiver Services. And I'm joined today by Aisha Gurley Perry, who is our Grant Specialist in ACL's Office of Grants Management.

(Aisha) is going to be working alongside of me on the business side of this particular initiative. This call is scheduled to go for approximately 60 to 90 minutes, but hopefully we won't need that much time. A printed transcript of this call, and a recording, will be available in a few days on Grants.gov, in association with, and alongside the Notice of Funding Opportunity. The transcript will include everything I go over today, as well as the complete Q&A at the end of call.

ACL is really excited about this opportunity for a number of reasons. Primarily it represents the first time in many years that the Older Americans Act Title III-E, National Family Caregiver Support Program has been able to make discretionary grants for the purposes of technical assistance and support. And so for that reason, this opportunity is very special. First, before I dive into the meat of the funding opportunity announcement, I want to point out several key dates to be aware of.

May 4th, that's today's teleconference. Like I said, it's being recorded, and a copy of this transcript will be available on Grants.gov; May 8th is the next important date to remember. This is the date that we're asking for Letters of Intent to apply. Now, these are optional but they're greatly appreciated, particularly given the size and complexity of this particular funding opportunity. Letters of Intent are the primary means by which I can set up the grant review process.

Having Letters of Intent from any organization even remotely interested in applying, will help me know approximately how many grant reviewers I need to recruit. And it can help me avoid potential conflicts of interest between grant reviewers and applicants, before the application comes in. So Letters of Intent are really important for me. They're not required. But I really ask for you to send them to me. And I'll talk a little bit about how to do that in just a moment.

The next big date you all need to be aware of, is June 26, 2023 at 11:59 pm Eastern. That is the due date for applications. And this date is firm and no extensions will be given. August 1, 2023 is the approximate start date for your project. This date could slip to September 1st, depending on how the grant review goes. So please keep in mind that August 1st is our tentative start date, and we're going to shoot for that. But it may slip to September 1st.

ACL has committed up to $5 million per year for four years, to this project. Of course, pending the availability of federal funds. ACL will award five cooperative agreements off of the single Notice of Funding Opportunity announcement; one cooperative agreement in each of the five priority areas described in the NOFO. The amount of the award for each cooperative agreement will vary based on the funding option chosen by the applicant. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in just a minute.

Now as most of you are hopefully aware, last September ACL, with support and guidance from the Family Caregiving Advisory Council authorized by the recognized assist includes support and engage, or RAISE, Family Caregivers Act, and the advisory council to support grandparents raising grandchildren authorized by the Supporting Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Act, delivered to Congress and the nation the first National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers.

The strategy is rooted in the priorities and recommendations made by both councils in their initial reports to Congress in 2021. The priority areas and recommendations for action, articulated in those reports, then formed the framework of the strategy as follows - increasing awareness of an outreach to family caregivers; advancing inclusion and engagement of family caregivers within care teams; advancing innovations in family caregiver services and supports; strengthening the financial and workplace security of family caregivers; and finally, advancing a family caregiver national research and data collection strategies.

This funding opportunity and the activities ACL wishes to see by the grantees, are aligned with each of those five priorities I just called off. The grantees selected under this Notice of Funding Opportunity, will be working to promote uptake and implementation of the principles in the strategy by aging, tribal, and kinship networks. I'm going to pause for just a second. (Aisha), I'm going to forward you several emails that I've gotten. People are using the incorrect passcode. Would you be able to respond to them with the correct passcode if I send those to you?

Greg Link: Wonderful. Give me two seconds and I'm going to forward you some emails. If folks could please just hold on a moment, and we'll be right back. Okay. Sorry about that. So, the grantees selected under this funding opportunity announcement will be working to promote uptake and implementation of the principles in the national strategy by the aging tribal and kinship networks. Those programs funded by the Older Americans Act National Family Caregiver Support Program and the Native American Caregiver Support Programs.

In this regard, I want applicants to be aware of a few key considerations. Grantees selected under this funding opportunity announcement, are expected to work at a national level, meaning that ACL is not going to fund local projects or local activities that are limited to one particular state or one community. Grantees will be taking a nationwide approach in their work and are expected to demonstrate the capacity to work on a national level in their applications.

Second, although ACL expects to fund five grantees off of this one funding opportunity announcement, the five grantees will be expected to work very closely together on this initiative, and they will be supported by ACL and a technical assistance contractor for the entirety of the four year project. The populations of family caregivers under consideration, are those eligible for Title III-E, and Title VI-C of the Older Americans Act programs.

Additionally, grantees will be working to make the tools, resources, and technical assistance relevant for those populations not eligible for the Older Americans Act programs as well. We want this to be a very, very broad approach. So the target audiences for the technical assistance and the end users, the customers of the technical assistance and related activities of each grantee, are varied.

It would be entities typically involved with implementing and operating programs funded by the Older Americans Act, including state units on aging and area agencies on aging, local aging services and family caregiver support providers, kinship, grandparent and grandfamily services providers, tribes and tribal entities, and other entities that may be part of the aging and/or tribal services network.

Additionally, given that the National Family Caregiver Support Program includes family caregivers of individuals with early onset dementia and older relative caregivers supporting adults ages 18 to 59 with disabilities, ACL desires that proposals identify how they're going to work to advance the capacity of the program to reach and serve these populations more effectively. So I want to walk through the funding announcement and highlight pages and sections that I really want you all to be aware of and pay attention to, as you're preparing your application.

So I'm going to be referring to the PDF of the Notice of Funding Opportunity and to the page numbers at the bottom of the PDF. So if you have the PDF open on your laptop or alongside of you, you can follow along. Or you can simply note that. So to begin the overview, at the bottom of page 3 of the PDF of the NOFO, begins the actual description of the funding opportunity. And I want you to note ACL's goal for this initiative, which is greater recognition, support, and inclusion of family caregivers served by the Older Americans Act Title III-E and Title VI-C programs, and greater alignment with other efforts to improve supports for family caregivers.

ACL wishes to ensure that the National Family Caregiver Support Program and its counterpart, the Native American Caregiver Support Program, are well-positioned to respond to and evolve with, a rapidly shifting policy and service delivery landscape. Now at the bottom of the PDF page 4, to about the middle of page 7, provides you some background and contextual information that hopefully provides applicants with ACL's rationale for why we believe this work is so important.

Throughout these pages we provide hyperlinks, and we strongly encourage you and your partners working on your applications, to review the resources and sites that we link to. The background information that we provide, is meant to give applicants a greater understanding of the broader environment within which this initiative is going to be working. And again, I want you all to remember that the focus of this initiative is on Older Americans Act Caregiver and Tribal Caregiver Support Programs, and the populations that they serve.

I want to talk a minute about the priority areas that we are looking to work in here. At the top of page 8 of the PDF is where we begin to discuss the five priority areas ACL wishes to focus on with this initiative. Note that there are five priority areas drawn directly from the national strategy, to support family caregivers. And each of these is described in some detail in the middle of PDF page 8, I want everyone to take note of the following, it begins with the word in bold, "important."

No entity may be the prime grantee on more than one of the funding options described below, meaning any one of the five priority areas. Given the complexity of the topic, however, of each of the topics of each of the priority areas, an entity may be a subgrantee or subcontractor on other projects from this NOFO, but for which they are not the prime grantee. Applicants submitting multiple applications as a prime applicant, will be eliminated from consideration during the application responsiveness screening process.

So in other words, ACL intends to award five grants or cooperative agreements, to five different unique entities, with each addressing only one of the priority areas. We will not fund any applicant as the primary grantee, to address more than one of the priority areas. And we also note here that in your application somewhere easily identifiable, in the title of your application, and at the very beginning of your project narrative somewhere, applicants should clearly state the funding option for which they are applying, in their project title or elsewhere, so that we can easily determine where to assign your application for review.

So for the next few pages, the funding opportunity proceeds to lay out ACL's vision for what technical assistance and support might look like in each of the five priority areas of the national strategy. And I'd like to say a few things about how you all might approach applying for this. Note that each of the priority areas is rooted in the strategy in some way. It's absolutely critical that you approach your applications with this in mind. ACL is looking for unique and broad-ranging partnerships to work on each of the priorities.

In each description of the priority area we discuss what some of those partnerships might consist of, and we also provide general ideas for areas of focus within that priority area. So I want you to think outside the box when pulling together partnerships to develop an application. Also note, please be aware that upper funding limits for each of the priority areas, is different, and that you may not request more than the upper limit for the priority. And ACL may fund lower than what you asked for, based on the availability of federal funds at the time.

So I just want to reiterate again, because this is really important, what I said a moment ago. No entity may be the prime grantee on more than one of the funding options described in the NOFO. Applicants submitting multiple applications as a prime applicant, will be eliminated from consideration during the screening process. And applicants should clearly state the funding option, the single one funding option to which they are applying, in their project title or elsewhere. so that we can easily determine it.

Now there's a section after we describe the five priority areas called Additional Application Elements. That begins on page 13. And following the description of each of the funding options is where you'll find the section called Additional Application Elements. For each of these elements - I'm going to pause for just one moment, please.

Each of these additional application elements apply to each of the five priority areas equally. And where applicable, will be incorporated by reference into the Notice of Award to successful applicants. And I want to touch on each one of them for just a moment. So the first additional element that should be addressed throughout the application, is using the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers, as a framework. This initiative reflects ACL's first formal investment in ensuring the principles of the strategy are embedded within the aging tribal and kinship services networks.

So every application that we get should have the principles of the national strategy embedded throughout. The second additional application element to address is organizational capacity. Grantees must possess the organizational expertise and capacity to apply multifaceted, comprehensive approaches in their efforts in their chosen area focus, either directly or by partnering with subject matter experts, and/or awarding subgrants and subcontracts, to carry out the desired activities outlined throughout the funding opportunity announcement.

Next, we have subgrants or subcontracts. As I just mentioned, sub awards are permitted. If you choose to have partners via sub awards, either subgrants or subcontracts, please note that the prime grantee is responsible for overseeing the work of the subgrantees and the subcontractors. And subgrantees and subcontractors are held to the same standards and reporting requirements as prime grantees. The next additional application element to be aware of, is the mandatory post award project planning and alignment period.

So the five grantees selected from this funding opportunity will be expected to participate in a mandatory post award project planning and alignment period. Remember, I said earlier, that we are expecting the five grantees to work very closely together, as well as with a technical assistance contract that we're also in the process of awarding.

During this period, which won't exceed three months, each of the five national grantees and their partners will collaborate with ACL program staff, each other, and technical assistance entities, to at a minimum, finalize and align your work plans, conduct environmental scans, formalize partnerships, execute subcontracts, or other MOUs with partner organizations to each grant, onboard and orient new staff as necessary, and finalize your evaluation plans.

So the NOFO lays out what ACL's expectations are for this mandatory post award project planning and alignment period. And we will work very, very closely with the five grantees to make sure that your projects are closely aligned and that we're working together towards a common outcome. The next area is cross collaboration and coordination with other technical assistance efforts. All five parties in this initiative - grantees, subgrantees, subcontractors, will become key resources in further developing and strengthening of programs and services in the National Family Caregiver Support Program.

Therefore close cooperation and collaboration between the five grantees, and ACL and other partners to the project that may come onboard, should be anticipated in the execution of your work plans and related activities. There are a number of other technical assistance centers and activities that ACL funds that may be brought into play, so that work can be coordinated and aligned. Using advisory and steering committees, and subject-matter experts, this is certainly allowable.

Applicants to this opportunity should explain how they will use a steering committee to assist their efforts and include a listing of the individuals and their backgrounds that will be invited to participate. Methods of technical assistance, capacity building and information dissemination - the strongest proposals are going to be those that propose a variety of approaches to delivering technical assistance and supporting capacity building within the chosen priority area and with the intended audiences.

The next area is Web site and Web presence. ACL is going to design and host the Web site dedicated to this initiative. This site that ACL designs will be an ACL.gov Web site. It will serve as the primary vehicle for presenting and organizing public-facing information. Grantees will be expected to collaborate with ACL and other partners and contractors in the initiative on the development, review, and posting of all information to this Web site.

And that brings me to accessibility and 508 compliance. ACL requires that all information and materials developed by the grantee and their partners for dissemination, regardless of the method, will be fully accessible that is 508 compliant, and meet cultural and linguistic needs of the intended audiences. And then finally, you can also note in the section, ACL's expectations for project outcomes, evaluation, and post-funding sustainability.

I want to just talk a second about the awarding information. There will be five grants awarded off of this funding opportunity announcement. Only one in each of five priority areas. The ceiling amount in any one of the priority areas is no more than $1.1 million. And the floor is no less than $300,000. And we indicate a ceiling and a floor for each of the funding options, and each of the priority areas. Grantees may be awarded less than they request, but never more than you request, and all funding, of course, is based on the availability of federal funds.

These are cooperative agreements, which means ACL will be substantially involved throughout the life of these projects. The terms and conditions of the cooperative agreement that each grantee will have with ACL, are noted on pages 17 and 18 of the PDF. They will be incorporated by reference, in the Notice of Award. Please make sure that you're familiar with the terms and conditions as they're stated.

Note that there's a matching requirement of 25% non-federal cash or in kind, and we provide examples for how to compute the match in the funding opportunity announcement. So please be sure you calculate the match correctly, basing your match on the total cost and not just the amount of federal funds being requested. On pages 20 and 21, we note both responsiveness and screening criteria. I will review each application that comes in, to make sure it meets two responsiveness criteria.

The first one is whether or not the proposed project focuses on only one of the five priority areas. And the second responsiveness criteria is that the project's proposed activities are national in scope. So for example, if I get an application or we see an application that comes in that is focusing on priority areas one and three, it gets screened out; it will not be considered. Likewise, if we get an application that only seeks to work at a community level or within a single state, that application is going to be screened out and not considered for funding.

We are looking for activities and work done on a national scale that benefits the entire country; all states, all territories. Applications will also be screened for formatting, noting font sizes, double line spacing, margins, and all of that. We're also giving you 40 pages to complete your narrative, which because of the importance and the scope of this project, we wanted applicants to have enough time and enough space to actually develop well-articulated project narratives.

Page 21 of the PDF contains some very important information about where to get application materials. And I think really of most importance, is that you make sure that you're registered on Grants.gov and that you have your SAMs number; that it's current; that you have active accounts. And if you don't, or if you're unsure that you have one, start now, because getting registered on Grants.gov to submit applications or getting your SAMs number, it can take some time. What we don't want you to do is wait until the very last minute to try to apply for those, and then you missed the deadline for applying.

Also, if you're having technical issues with Grants.gov or SAMs, do not call me. We have telephone numbers in the NOFO that you should call for technical support if you're having problems with Grants.gov or SAM. I can't provide technical assistance on that. Those are not our systems and I don't know them at all, to be able to help you. Letters of intent - as I mentioned earlier, they're not required, but we sure are encouraging you to send them.

We use them as a planning tool and nothing else. Formal letters are not required unless that's your organization's standard practice. It can be as simple as a quick email that says, "Hey, Greg, we're going to apply, and here's the organization name." Letters of Intent should be emailed to me at Greg, G-R-E-G dot Link, L-I-N-K at ACL.HHS.gov. On page 23 to about page 26, we talk about what should be included in each section of the narrative, and how to structure that part of your application. Please read the section carefully.

Budget narratives and work plans - these are two absolutely critical components of your application, and they do not count towards the 40-page project narrative limit. So things like, Curriculum Vitae resumes, your budget narrative, your work plan, none of those count towards the 40-page limit of your narrative, so you don't have to worry about that, but budget narratives and work plans are required.

We provide templates for these near the back of the funding announcement document, and you're welcome to use them or come up with some similar versions of your own. As long as you provide the information that we need, you should be fine. Now with respect to the budget narratives, be sure that you do one budget narrative for each of the four years of the project, and then one cumulative budget narrative, covering all four years of the project. And then work plans should cover each year of the project, and provide details with respect to who is doing what task and when those will happen, etc.

Pages 27 to 29 contain further information about SAM numbers. Again, later on in the document, we talk about the due date for applications, which is June 26th 11:59 pm Eastern. On page 30, please be aware of the funding restrictions and be sure to adhere to those as you design your proposals. If you're not familiar with the strict restrictions on the use of federal funds, please pay close attention to this part. Application review criteria begins on page 31 and goes through about the middle of page 34 are the exact criteria by which each application will be reviewed.

These are the only criteria our merit review panelists will use. When you complete your application you may want to use these criteria and do a final review of your entire application package, using the criteria as a guide. And if you can answer yes to each of the questions you'll likely have a complete application. But keep in mind that that does not guarantee funding. It just means that you've addressed everything that ACL has asked you to address in your application.

The individuals who complete the merit review are all third party reviewers who will not contact you, or do any other research to determine the completeness of your application. So your narratives have to tell your story; they have to lay out what you're going to do. So please use the review criteria as a tool, to help you make sure that you're developing well thought out proposals.

We anticipate sending Notices of Award to the successful applicants, around the end of July, for an 8-1 start date. Depending on the number of applications we receive and other factors, this could slip. ACL technically has until September 30th to get Notices of Award out. So we are definitely shooting for an 8-1 start date, but that could slip depending on workload. And this is as specific as I can be regarding when you might hear about the status of your application.

So that concludes my overview of the NOFO. If we want to go ahead and open the lines or begin queuing up folks, if they have questions, I'll be happy to answer questions. Operator?

Q: Hi. I was wondering if you could please clarify if state councils on developmental disabilities are eligible to apply.

Greg Link: They would be, provided their intent is to focus on the programs funded under the Older Americans Act Title III-E and Title VI-C.

Greg Link: Yes. The funding for this particular initiative, the $5 million is our Older Americans Act funding dollars. And so they are restricted to providing training and technical assistance and demonstration work to the programs funded under the Older Americans Act only. But this is an open competition.

Q: Hi. Thank you. My question was, is ACL hoping to award one in each of those priority areas? Or as promising proposals are coming through, that may be up to ACL's ultimate discretion?

Greg Link: No. Just one proposal in each area. One award in each area.

Q: Thank you. Is it feasible or appropriate to provide - to use the funding to provide direct services to family caregivers? And if so, is there a limit to the amount that can be used?

Greg Link: We have not specified that in the funding opportunity announcement. This is about training, technical assistance, and capacity building for the aging tribal, and kinship and grant family support networks, funded under the Older Americans Act.

Q: And therefore you don't expect them to use the funds to actually provide services such as support services, education services, nationally?

Greg Link: Correct. That is not specified in the NOFO. This is about training, technical assistance, and capacity building.

Q: Hi. Thanks. I'm [name] calling from [organization], and I think you may have just answered part of my question. We provide tech training and support designed for older adults. We've been working with AAAs around the country, primarily, and other social service agencies. But we are a public benefit corp, so I don't believe that we're eligible. But my original question was going to be to ask you if there's a way for us to be able to identify which, you know, which national organizations or which types of national organizations may be applying.

And to the extent that we can help support them as a subcontractor, we would be interested in that. But also, it sounds like if you're not - if this is not direct services, I'm curious to get your thoughts on how something like providing technical training and support could potentially be supportive of the work that you're looking to do with this grant.

Greg Link: So I wouldn't have a way of connecting you to other organizations that might be the prime. I would have no way of knowing how to do that, or who's working on what. We're really expecting, you know, folks to come together, you know, using your contacts that you have, to reach out and to see who's doing what. You know, we - obviously, the use of technology was a focus in the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers, particularly under Goal 3, Technological Solutions for Supporting Family Caregivers.

So the extent to which your - the capacities and the expertise of your organization could lend/add value to the entity who may be working under Goal 3, which is the supports and services, would certainly, I think, be - would come into play. The same thing with other, you know, other priority areas where technology may be a - technology solutions may be a factor. So I think it's possible, but again, how that would play out is going to be up to the applicants and the partners that come together to apply to, you know, put together in their proposals.

Q: Yes. No. I appreciate that. We are working, as I said, locally with - we just actually received a three-year grant from the State of Ohio, to provide this under family caregiving, so we're already working locally. But yes, to the extent that there are organizations that need, that I would be happy to connect offline with that. Thank you so much.

Q: Hi. Thank you so much. So my understanding is that this targets, you know, family caregivers in general. Is it okay to specify, for example, caregivers of people living with dementia or at risk of dementia?

Greg Link: Sure. The caregivers targeted by this are those eligible to be served under the National Family Caregiver Support Program. So that's family caregivers age 18 and older, providing support to an older person, an individual age 60 and older. Family caregivers ages 18 and older, who are providing care and support to an individual of any age, with dementia, so early onset dementia could be part of that. And then we have older relative caregivers, 55 and older, who are raising children under the age of 18, and older relative caregivers again, ages 55 and older, who could also be parents of individuals ages 18 to 59, with disabilities.

Those are the four eligibility categories allowed in the National Family and Tribal Caregiver Support Program. So those are the target populations of caregivers that we're talking about. And, you know, within the early onset dementia and the older relative caregivers of adults ages 18 to 59, we do get into some of the younger disability populations. But because these are Older Americans Act funds, with very specific eligibility requirements, who the project is focused on is limited at this point to Older Americans Act eligible participants.

Q: Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm from [university]. This is [name]. We just like wrapped up some work in this area statewide, and I'm very much interested in this funding opportunity. And my question is somewhat like similar to [name]. So is ACL going to release at least the name of the attendees today, who are attending this session, and who are interested in this funding opportunity, just to facilitate partnerships across the nation?

Greg Link: I will have to see if that's permissible. I can't say yes or no. But I don't know. I have to check with the grant's policy around that. Normally, the grant - the application process, everything, is confidential. So I can't promise.

Q: Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I just asked the question because some similar, you know, like proposal opportunities from other federal agencies, they actually kind of like facilitate the partnerships for things of this magnitude. So thank you. Thank you for your answer.

Q: Yes. Hello. Good afternoon to you. You know, supporting family caregivers has been an urgent public health issue, especially in underserved communities such as tribal communities. My question is, as far as capacity building on the context of tribal caregiving, addressing trauma and advancing equity as - such as inclusion, what are the main project activities that we should look at to promote the sustainability of the lifetime of the program after the initial project period is done?

Greg Link: Let me see if I understand your question. You know, definitely one of the underlying tenets of the Older Americans Act is that the programs and the funding that are administered under the Older Americans Act, should have a focus on underserved limited English-speaking populations, racial/ethnic minorities, including tribes. I mean Title VI of the Older Americans Act is all about supporting members of tribes and tribal communities.

Around sustainability, there are any number of ways to look at how you sustain project activities. Because this is technical assistance, it's not direct service, you know, sustainability plans would involve, you know, securing funding or other sources of support to maintain project activities beyond the scope of federal funding. It's being able to tap into other resources once federal funding ends, to continue, if you've developed an education program that's ongoing, you know, that you don't want to see end, it's finding other funding streams; perhaps looking to private philanthropies or other, you know, local sources of funding.

It can be any range of things. It's really up to the individual entity and project to determine what their sustainability plans will be.

Q: Yes. Good afternoon. This is not a question, but this is a compliment concerning your efforts to target this important subject-matter; training, educating caregivers across the country, based on two factors - preexisting health conditions and post pandemic health conditions. And in our opinion, we have noted that the healthcare system will not be able to take this capacity going forward, in reference to preexisting and pandemic post existing health situations.

So we just want to compliment you guys at ACL, and human health systems, yes, health system, for putting this vital subject matter out there. And hopefully, we can do more because more is needed. Thank you.

Q: Thank you. It's a different question entirely. This is [name] from the [organization]. We are very glad that the funding opportunity points to the crosscutting themes and the four principles document of the family caregiver strategy, including the impact of trauma on the family caregiving experience. And I'm also very grateful that this opportunity listed Jewish Federations of North America, as a resource on that.

So I want to actually just put ourselves out there as an offer of a resource. I know a lot of people on this call seem curious about, you know, other applicants or organizations in this space. But if anyone would like more information about that, I put myself out there as a resource. And others who are interested are welcome to contact me at Aging@JewishFederations.org. And we're again, very grateful for this opportunity.

Q: Yes. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity also. I was just wondering if you were envisioning a role at all for the lifespan respite grantees and their partners who have certainly developed a level of respite expertise in systems building and innovation, perhaps as collaborators in this effort on any level?

Greg Link: Well, absolutely. I mean since, you know, since Goal 3 is all about services and supports, and respite is, I believe, I want to say it's outcome number 3 or maybe 2, I can't remember, you know, respite is definitely one of those areas that we would like to see some work in. And we also recognize the tremendous work that (ARCH) and the lifespan respite grantees have done to advance the field of respite. So absolutely, there would be a role to play.

I would think for some of the state grantees for, you know, the (ARCH) National Respite Network and Resource Center, to work on Goal 3 or really any of the areas that touch respite, whether it's information or outreach or, you know, systems development, and what have you. It just would be after you guys to figure - determine the best way to infuse that work on a national level.

Greg Link: Okay. Well, I want to thank everyone. This is - in all my years of doing this, this is by far the largest group of interested applicants, but certainly, the most questions I've ever fielded from a funding opportunity announcement. So that excites me to no end, because I really feel like there's an energy out there. ACL is very, very excited about this opportunity. It meshes - for those of you who follow caregiving and caregiving related policy, you know that just a couple of weeks ago President Biden signed his Care Executive Order.

It talks about, you know, his executive order mentions by name, the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers. ACL envisions this work as directly supporting implementation of the National Strategy, for the moment, within the Older Americans Act funded National and Tribal Caregiver Support Programs. That's our focus because that's where the funding is coming from. But we see this as a real opportunity to make some advancements in what we know is a key administration priority.

So if there are no other questions, I want to thank everyone. Please, please, please send me those Letters of Intent. Emails are fine. Just let me know that you're going to be applying. That way I can begin to structure the grant review a little bit later this summer. And if there are no more questions, we will end the call. And thank you very much.

Coordinator: Speakers, you may stand by for a post conference. That concludes today's conference. You may all disconnect at this time. END