Access and Visitation (AV) Mandatory Grant Program is a federal program administered by the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Child Support Enforcement (HHS ACF OCSE) that funds states and territories to help noncustodial parents maintain meaningful contact with their children.

Congress mandates $10 million annually distributed across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Funded services include parent education, mediation, visitation enforcement, parenting plan development, and rapid rehousing support. In FY 2024, parent education accounted for 47% of services.

States may contract with nonprofits, courts, tribes, and counties to deliver services. All programs must include family violence safeguards.

Access and Visitation Mandatory Grant Program | The Administration for Children and Families Click Here to Report Suspected Child Care Fraud Access and Visitation Mandatory Grant Program Each year, OCSE provides $10 million in mandatory grant funding to states and territories to operate the Access and Visitation (AV) program. Legally, it’s designed to fund services to help noncustodial parents spend more time with their children.

In most states and territories, the AV program is administered by the child support agency, which increases the likelihood that AV services reach parents in the child support program. We’re working with multiple states to expand availability for these parents. States can provide AV services directly or through contracts with courts, tribes, counties, and organizations such as nonprofits.

In FY 2024, parent education, including legal education, accounted for 47% of all AV services. The next most common services were visitation enforcement at 25% and mediation at 17%. Other services include parenting plan development and visitation enforcement.

All states must have family violence safeguards in place to ensure participants can access AV services safely. Importance of access and visitation Researchers have found that financial and emotional supports are interrelated. U.S. Census data consistently show that custodial parents with custody or parenting time arrangements are more likely to receive child support.

Congress recognized the public policy value of parental access and visitation in the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act of 2014. The law encouraged states to use AV program funds to help establish parenting time arrangements in the child support program. In FY 2024, nearly 60,000 parents and guardians participated in AV program services, thereby affecting more than 67,000 children.

While the AV program aims to provide services that support noncustodial parents’ time with their children, both parents often participated in many of the allowable services. Here is the breakdown of AV program participants in FY 2024: 4% legal guardians and grandparents The AV program is a key resource for never married parents who generally don’t have a readily accessible formal process for establishing access and visitation rights.

This group constituted the majority (63%) of parents using AV program services in FY 2024. While divorcing parents may establish shared parenting time agreements through the family court system, unmarried parents often need to navigate multiple, complex legal proceedings to resolve child support and parenting time issues. AV program services can help bridge this gap.

Unlike some other grant programs, AV grants are not competitively awarded. Congress instructed us to distribute funds to each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. We use a formula that includes U.S. Census data on children living with one biological parent and the total number of children in each eligible jurisdiction.

The AV program’s minimum grant award is $100,000. For more information, see the Access and Visitation Program Update - FY 2024 or contact Michael Hayes at michael. hayes@acf.

hhs. gov .