Head Start and/or Early Head Start Grantee

Head Start and/or Early Head Start Grantee is a grant from the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), HHS that funds early childhood education and family support services for low-income children from birth through age five. The program supports comprehensive child development services including education, health, nutrition, and family engagement.

ACF's Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) also funds research evaluations in areas such as child welfare, home visiting, and tribal early childhood programs. Eligible applicants include nonprofits, faith-based organizations, public agencies, and tribal entities. Awards typically range from $500,000 to $10,000,000 depending on program scope and number of children served.

Grants | The Administration for Children and Families Click Here to Report Suspected Child Care Fraud OPRE makes grants to support research in areas such as child care, Head Start and Early Head Start, child welfare, home visiting, welfare and employment, strengthening families and healthy marriage, family and youth services, and interoperability and data sharing. We do not make grants to individuals or for direct services.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ) and answers are provided in some descriptions below. Should a discrepancy exist between the FAQ and the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), the NOFO takes precedence. OPRE plans to post questions and answers on an ongoing basis up until 30 calendar days before the application due date.

Applicants are strongly encouraged to check the FAQ website link periodically for updates. Funding is subject to availability of funds and the best interests of the federal government.

Prevention Services Evaluation Partnerships: Supporting Adoptive Families Tribal Child Care Data and Research Capacity Awards Tribal Early Childhood and Family Economic Well-being Research and Evaluation Grants Prevention Services Evaluation Partnerships: Supporting Adoptive Families The Prevention Services Evaluation Partnerships: Supporting Adoptive Families funding opportunity aims to support a summative randomized control trial or quasi-experimental evaluation of programs and services intended to provide enhanced support to children and families in adoption arrangements at risk of disruption or dissolution that may result in foster care placements.

This funding opportunity will support collaborations among evaluators and partnering Title IV-E agencies, community entities, and/or researchers that have experience in working with adopted children, foster children or children in kinship care arrangements to conduct well-designed and rigorous evaluations of programs or services in the areas of mental health, substance abuse prevention and/or treatment, in-home parent skill-based, or kinship navigator.

The award recipient is expected to conduct a randomized control trial or quasi-experimental evaluation design that aligns with Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse (the Clearinghouse) Design and Execution Standards for Moderate or High Support of Causal Evidence and may contribute to the research systematically reviewed by the Clearinghouse.

The award recipient may collect and analyze primary data or leverage existing administrative data for the proposed evaluation. This NOFO is authorized under Title II, section 203(b)(4) of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Adoption Reform Act of 1978 (CAPTA) (42 U.S.C. 5113(b)(4)), as amended by CAPTA Reauthorization Act of 2010.

The FY24 Bipartisan Appropriation Bill appropriated funds for the evaluation of a program or service designed to meet the needs of adoptive families aimed at meeting the evidence standards of the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse (S. Rept. 118-84).

Tribal Child Care Data and Research Capacity Awards The Tribal Child Care Data and Research Capacity Awards (Phase I) will support partnerships between Tribal (CCDF) Lead Agencies and research and coordinating organizations to develop and improve tribal data systems and strengthen capacity-building of Tribal CCDF Lead Agencies.

Sponsored projects will identify, collect, analyze, and use early childhood data to complete research activities guiding policy and program improvement efforts.

Specifically, projects will explore: questions of interest to local tribal communities and ACF to investigate tribal child care policies and practices; data sources available to answer questions of interest and assess the accessibility of those data; possible data sources from other tribal and local data systems for linking; and the barriers and opportunities to collecting, analyzing, and using data to inform tribal child care policy decisions and CCDF administrative practices.

Activities under the planning grants include development of a plan for identifying, linking, and using tribal early childhood data to inform child care policy decisions, as well as a plan for sharing and disseminating information with partnering agencies and organizations. This grant program is allowable under Section 658O(a)(5) of the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act (42 U.S.C.

9858m(a)(5)) as amended by the CCDBG Act of 2014 §9) and is directly responding to under 45 CFR 98. 83, Tribal Lead agencies shall use no less than nine percent of allocations for activities designed to improve the quality of and access to child care services described in 45 CFR 98. 53.

Under §98. 53, Lead Agencies must carry out at least one of the listed quality activities to improve the quality of child care services for all children.

This list includes, but is not limited to: Incorporating the effective use of data to guide program improvement and improve opportunities for caregivers, teachers and directors to advance on their progression of training, professional development, and postsecondary education; Evaluating and assessing the quality and effectiveness of child care programs and services offered, including evaluating how such programs positively impact children.

Tribal Early Childhood and Family Economic Well-being Research and Evaluation Grants OPRE anticipates announcing the availability of funds and requesting applications for the Tribal Early Childhood and Family Economic Well-being Research Center (TRC). The TRC has been a central mechanism for executing research and evaluation and disseminating it to ACF Tribal programs for over 20 years.

The TRC will provide leadership, collaboration, and support for culturally responsive and actionable research and evaluation of federal early childhood and family economic well-being initiatives that serve Indigenous communities.

The TRC program areas include childcare programs (center-based, home based and family childcare providers), Head Start and Early Head Start programs, home visiting programs, and Tribal TANF and related economic well-being initiatives.

The TRC is expected to (1) serve as a hub for strategically disseminating information and facilitating peer exchange on culturally responsive research, evaluation, and measurement of early childhood programs and family economic well-being initiatives in Indigenous communities; (2) identify and disseminate information on the validity of existing measures of culturally meaningful inputs, implementation processes, and outcomes of shared interest across TRC program areas; (3) further explore, test the validity, and increase the usefulness and adoption within practice settings of culturally grounded measures of shared interest across TRC program areas; (4) engage in and facilitate secondary analyses of extant data from across TRC program areas (e.g., administrative data, accessible national datasets) to better understand community characteristics, implementation processes, and outcomes; (5) provide training and professional development to promote interest and competencies in culturally responsive and actionable research, evaluation, and measurement relevant to early childhood programs and family economic well-being initiatives in Indigenous communities.

The TRC will bring together a team with expertise in each of the TRC program areas and will be equipped to engage local Indigenous program administrators and staff and federal staff across all TRC program areas. The TRC leverages funds from Head Start, Child Care, MIECHV, Social Services Research & Demonstration to cover the needs of the range of ACF Tribal programs.