Familias Unidas (EBP)

The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS), issued a Request for Information on August 1, 2026 to identify vendors interested in providing the evidence-based program Familias Unidas for implementation under the Family First Prevention Services Act, with RFI responses due September 1, 2026 at 2:00 p.m. Central Time via electronic submission.

Familias Unidas is a 12-week family-centered intervention targeting Hispanic adolescents ages 12 to 16 and their families to address mental health, substance use, and parenting skills through eight parent support network group sessions and four individual family visit sessions. All services must be delivered in person. The program emphasizes preventing child welfare involvement and strengthening families and communities.

Selected vendors must employ facilitators who hold at least a bachelor's degree and are fluent in Spanish, and complete 32-hour certification training. Vendors are responsible for facilitator recruitment, training, ongoing technical assistance, data collection, and performance measure reporting. Vendors must adhere to fidelity standards, participate in annual training, collaborate with the model purveyor and community partners including the 211 Warmline, and report performance outcomes such as maintaining 85% of referred families with children in-home at service discharge and sustaining this outcome for six months post-discharge. Referrals will be coordinated through Child and Family Services Specialists (CFSS) and the Community Pathway, with a minimum of 12 parents required to form multifamily groups.

The contract will have an initial maximum term of one year, with DHHS evaluating whether Familias Unidas is meeting prevention goals before determining state expansion. The pilot implementation will span a minimum of six months. No contract value, geographic service area, projected case volume, or implementation start date has been established. Compensation will be structured as a case rate covering facilitation, individual family visits, and administrative work; no state startup funding is currently available. Vendors may propose pilot locations, though DHHS will make final site selection based on data analysis identifying elevated Hispanic family involvement in child welfare, community readiness, bilingual workforce capacity, and existing prevention infrastructure. Written questions were due August 17, 2026. This RFI does not obligate DHHS to issue a subsequent Request for Proposal or enter into a contract, and vendors will not be reimbursed for response costs.