Description
This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) provides fiscal year (FY) 2016 funds for the Tribal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (Tribal MIECHV) Implementation and Expansion Grants. Funds will support 5-year grants (cooperative agreements) between the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and federally-recognized Indian tribes (or a consortium of Indian tribes), tribal organizations, or urban Indian organizations that are currently operating an evidence-based home visiting program and propose to sustain and/or expand their established infrastructure for home visiting services in tribal communities. The goals of the Tribal MIECHV Program include: Supporting the development of happy, healthy, and successful American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) children and families through a coordinated home visiting strategy that addresses critical maternal and child health, development, early learning, family support, and child abuse and neglect prevention needs. Implementing high-quality, culturally-relevant, evidence-based home visiting programs in AI/AN communities. Expanding the evidence base around home visiting interventions with Native populations. Supporting and strengthening cooperation and coordination and promoting linkages among various programs that serve pregnant women, expectant fathers, young children, and families, resulting in coordinated, comprehensive early childhood systems in grantee communities. This FOA is intended for tribal entities that have an established history of implementation of high-quality, culturally relevant, evidence-based home visiting services to AI/AN families and children, implementation of performance measurement and continuous quality improvement systems, development of early childhood systems, and conducting rigorous evaluation. Applicants may include existing grantees under the Tribal MIECHV program that are proposing to sustain and/or expand services, as well as other tribal entities that can demonstrate past and current experience with conducting such activities and are proposing to expand services. A separate FOA (Tribal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program Development and Implementation Grants, HHS-2016-ACF-OCC-TH-1161) is intended for tribal entities without prior experience implementing and evaluating home visiting programs. Since 2010, ACF and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the agencies collaborating to implement the Tribal MIECHV program within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), have supported the planning and implementation of the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (MIECHV, the Federal Home Visiting Program). Through these and other initiatives, tribal communities have spent years developing strong capacity and infrastructure for delivery of high-quality, culturally relevant, evidence-based home visiting services, implementation of performance measurement and continuous quality improvement systems, development of early childhood systems, and conducting rigorous evaluation. Building on this work, the Tribal MIECHV Implementation and Expansion Grants will support sustained, strengthened, and/or expanded efforts in tribal communities to provide high-quality, culturally relevant, evidence-based home visiting services to AI/AN families and children. During the 5-year project periods of the cooperative agreement, funds will support: - Conducting or updating a needs and readiness assessment of the tribal community that considers community characteristics and the quality and capacity of existing home visiting programs and other supportive services, examines community readiness to implement a quality home visiting program, is coordinated with other relevant needs assessments, and involves community stakeholders; - Collaborative planning efforts to address identified needs by sustaining and/or expanding capacity and infrastructure to fully plan for, adopt, implement, and sustain high-quality home visiting programs that have strong fidelity to evidence-based models; - Providing high-quality, culturally appropriate, evidence-based home visiting services to pregnant women, expectant fathers, and parents and primary caregivers of young children aged birth to kindergarten entry; - Engaging in activities to strengthen the ability of early childhood programs to work together and develop a network of supports for expectant families and families with young children; - Implementing a performance measurement system to measure, track, and report on progress toward meeting legislatively mandated benchmarks and engage in data-driven continuous quality improvement activities; and - Participating in and/or conducting rigorous program evaluation activities that will contribute to the empirical evidence base on implementation, efficacy, effectiveness, and/or adaptation of home visiting programs in AI/AN communities. Grantees will EITHER A) Participate in a rigorous multi-site implementation evaluation involving multiple grantees that will be developed and overseen by ACF in strong collaboration with participating grantees and tribal communities. The purpose of this multi-site implementation evaluation will be to understand factors that support quality implementation and adaptation of home visiting programs in tribal communities, and to explore how implementation relates to proximal and distal outcomes; OR B) Conduct a rigorous local evaluation that examines the efficacy of an evidence-based or promising home visiting model (or components of models) in affecting outcomes of value in tribal communities. All grantees who choose to conduct a rigorous local evaluation will be encouraged to participate in the multi-site implementation evaluation to the extent feasible and relevant. During Year 1 of the grants, grantees are expected to maintain existing home visiting services to families while conducting or updating their needs and readiness assessment, improving and enhancing organizational and community infrastructure to carry out grant activities, and developing an implementation plan to respond to identified needs through sustained and/or expanded services (including developing or updating a plan for performance measurement and continuous quality improvement and participating in and/or conducting rigorous evaluation activities). During Years 2-5, grantees will implement approved plans to sustain or expand their high-quality evidence-based home visiting services; implement performance measurement systems and engage in continuous quality improvement activities; engage in activities to strengthen early childhood supports for families; and conduct and/or participate in rigorous evaluation activities.