Home Visiting Program FOA Released by HRSA
Jun 17 2010Last week saw the release of the first of three Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOA) from the US Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) regarding the highly-anticipated federal expansion of home visiting programs, made possible with the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA). The FOA asks states to specify the process for undertaking a needs assessment, describe aniticipated technical assistance needs, and specify whether or not they will apply for a grant to provide evidence-based home visiting services under this grant (the grant application will be part of the third FOA, expected to be released in mid-August).
Noteably, the FOA places significant emphasis on collaboration and coordination among home visiting programs and other programs in states’ network of early childhood systems. Though the funding will exclusively support evidenced-based home visiting services, the expected results specified in the FOA extend well beyond the scope of most home visiting models. This highlights HRSA’s emphasis on integrating planning for these home visiting services with coordinated planning for a broader range of supports for children and families. HRSA is clear that home visiting sits within a larger life course development and ecological framework and must be part of a broader comprehensive early childhood system.
As evidence of collaboration, states are expected to submit a letter of support from the CAPTA Title II lead agency in their responses to the FOA, and the required needs assessment must be coordinated with the CAPTA Title II needs assessment. Additionally, although only one entity or group of entities, designated by a state’s Governor, will receive and manage funds for a state, Letters of Commitment or Memoranda of Understanding ”that describe working relationships between the applicant agency and other agencies and programs cited in the proposal” are required.
The FOA’s focus on states placing their home visiting programs within a broader array of services and supports for families of young children is very much in keeping with the fundamental concepts behind Strengthening Families. In fact, the work that many states have undertaken to use the Protective Factors as a platform for collaboration across ealy childhood systems and settings has the potential to greatly strengthen their responses to the FOA. Strengthening Families has allowed many states to bring together existing stakeholders around a broad range of outcomes, and many are already impacting the home visiting programs in their states. We hope to see this work support states as they begin planning for this historic expansion of supportive early childhood services for young children and their families.
For more on the key provisions of the new home visiting program:
- Parents as Teachers
- Nurse Family Partnership: FAQ and More Information
- Center for the Study of Social Policy (CLASP)—Detailed summary of the related provisions in ACA
Photo courtesy of flickr user torres21 under Creative Commons license.
PolicyforResults.org Offers Effective Strategies on Reducing Teen and Unplanned Pregnancies
Jun 14 2010Did you know that nearly 3 in 10 girls in the United States get pregnant by age 20? Although the national rates for teen births and pregnancies are down by about a third since the 1990s, the U.S. still has the highest rates in the industrialized world. To assist state policymakers PolicyforResults.org has been expanded by the Center for the Study of Social Policy, in partnership with the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. The site now offers policymakers strategies to reduce teen and unplanned pregnancies in their states and includes data, research, state examples, links to materials, and recommendations for policy options that have demonstrated results.
Upcoming Webinar (6/15): Strengthening Families Family Child Care and Self-Assessment
Jun 02 2010Although approximately 22% of children under 6 who attend child care are in family child care settings, we know relatively little about the programs and providers that serve their families.
In 2009, the Center for the Study of Social Policy released the report, “Almost Like Family: Family Child Care,” the culmination of a four-state study of family child care programs, their providers, the families that use them, and the systems that support them. The report focuses on the unique needs and challenges of family child care programs and providers, and explores how a Strengthening Families approach, centered on building Protective Factors with families, can benefit the children, parents, and providers in family child care.
This webinar will present the findings from the study and will introduce an adaptation of the Strengthening Families Self-Assessment for family child care homes. Staff from the National Center for Parents as Teachers will share their curriculum for home visitors working with family, friend, and neighbor child care providers, the newest edition of which incorporates the Protective Factors and the Self-Assessment for Family Child Care.
DATE: June 15, 2010
TIME: 2:30 PM ET - 4:00 PM ET
Read more:
- Almost Like Family: Family Child Care. Center for the Study of Social Policy. October, 2009.
- Self-Assessment for Family Child Care. Center for the Study of Social Policy. October, 2009
- “Parents as Teachers Supports Quality Home Visiting for Family, Friend, and Neighbor Caregivers.” National Center for Parents as Teachers. February, 2009.
This webinar will be recorded for those unable to attend.
20 States Receive ARRA Funds to Update and Improve Data Systems from Early Education
May 25 2010If you’ve been following our Twitter feed (@StrengthenFams), you may have noticed that 20 states were recently awarded a total of $250 million in federal funding to radically improve their systems for data collection in education. Since the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems Grant Program was authorized in the 2002 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, all but a handful of states have received grants. The recent infusion of funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 created the largest infusion of funds into this program since its inception.
Grantees will work to create systems that can track students as they move from school to school, particularly during critical periods of transition - from elementary school to middle school, and middle school to high school. All 20 states will be designing and implementing data systems that will “support the inclusion of data from preschool through postsecondary and workforce information,” yielding exceptionally rich datasets. Researchers will be able to use these data to learn even more about the effects of early education on long-term outcomes. States will also be linking student and teacher data, to illuminate the impact that teachers have on the success of pupils.
After awards were announced by the US Department of Education, several state issued their own announcements. Strengthening Families states receiving ARRA funding for data systems improvement:
Image courtesy of flickr user San Jose Library under Creative Commons license.
Moderate Increases in Pre-K Funding in States’ 2011 Budgets
May 24 2010As state leaders grapple with crippling defecits and struggle to balance budgets, many of the services and supports that families rely on are on the chopping block. A new report from Pre-K Now, a project of the Pew Center on the States, indicates that, for now at least, state pre-K programs are relatively safe.
Analysis of governors’ proposed budgets and State of the State speeches indicates that state funding for pre-K programs nationwide will actually increase slightly in 2011. If governors’ current proposals are enacted, nine states will increase pre-K funding, while ten states will maintain current funding levels. Pre-K Now attributes the emphasis on sustaining or increasing early education funding on policymakers’ growing awareness of research demonstrating the benefits of quality early education.
The news is not all good, though. Twelve governors are proposing reductions in state funding for pre-K, and ten states do not have any state-funded pre-K programs.i Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s 2011 budget proposal eliminates pre-K in that state, and Governor Pat Quinn proposes 16% cuts to Illinois’s Preschool for All program. Furthermore, the National Institute for Early Education Research’s (NIEER) report, The State of Preschool: 2010, released earlier this month, indicates that even in states supporting pre-K programs, funding is often insufficient to ensure quality.
The short- and long-term social and economic gains of investing in quality early care and education have been demonstrated again and again. Children, families, communities, and states all benefit when high quality early childhood services are widely available. It is encouraging to see that even in times of extreme economic strain, many of the nation’s governors are acknowledging these facts and prioritizing early education. However, as both Pre-K Now’s and NIEER’s recent reports indicate, there is plenty of room for improvement.
- Explore Leadership Matters FY2011 from Pre-K Now
- Go to NIEER’s annual report card for states, The State of Preschool: 2010
i. The remaining nine states have funding that is linked to enrollment.
Image courtesy of flickr user cafemama under Creative Commons license.
