Tribal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program: Implementation and Expansion Grants

Background
The Office of Early Childhood Development within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) will be soliciting applications for the Fiscal Year 2023 Tribal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Grant Program: Implementation and Expansion Grants. Funds will support five (5)-year grants (cooperative agreements) between 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 serving expectant families and families with young children aged birth to kindergarten entry, and propose to sustain or expand their established infrastructure for home visiting services in tribal communities.

Grant Details
The goals of the Tribal MIECHV program are to support healthy, happy, successful AI/AN children and families through a coordinated, high-quality, culturally grounded, evidence-based home visiting strategy; to continue to build the evidence base for home visiting in tribal communities; and to support coordination among early childhood programs serving AI/AN families and development of early childhood systems.

The grant will support activities such as conducting or updating a coordinated community needs and readiness assessment of at-risk tribal communities; collaborative planning efforts to address identified needs by developing capacity and infrastructure to fully plan and implement high-quality home visiting programs; providing high-quality culturally grounded, evidence-based home visiting services to expectant families, parents and primary caregivers of young children aged birth to kindergarten entry; engaging in activities to support stronger early childhood systems and cross-program collaboration in tribal communities; supporting the mental health of children, families, and program staff; conducting performance measurement activities and developing or updating a data system and mechanism to measure, track, and report on progress toward meeting legislatively mandated benchmarks for participating children and families; engaging in continuous quality improvement activities; participating in MIECHV-funded evaluation opportunities to promote learning and contribute to the MIECHV Learning Agenda.

Eligibility Requirements
The funding is intended for tribal entities that have an established history of implementation of high-quality, culturally grounded, evidence-based home visiting programs for AI/AN families and children and are currently operating these services. Applicants may include existing grant recipients under the Tribal MIECHV program that are proposing to sustain 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.

Period of Performance
The grant will support five-year cooperative agreements between ACF and eligible tribal entities.

Grant Value
Congress appropriated $500 million for FY 2023 for the MIECHV program as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023. Section 511(h)(2)(A) of Title V of the Social Security Act authorizes the Secretary of HHS to award grants to Indian tribes (or a consortium of Indian tribes), tribal organizations, or urban Indian organizations. The legislation sets aside 6 percent of the total MIECHV appropriation for grants to tribal entities.