The Children’s Bureau seeks trauma-informed interventions to address trauma in children and youth with complex mental, behavioral, and health conditions.
Donor Name: Children’s Bureau
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 07/25/2023
Size of the Grant: $1,000,000
Grant Duration: 36 months
Details:
The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Children’s Bureau (CB) will make up to two awards for up to 36 months each. These demonstration projects (from this point on referred to as “a project”) will implement and evaluate innovative trauma-informed programming. The focus is services for children and youth with complex needs who are in foster care.
Funding supports projects to implement interventions that are culturally and developmentally responsive, achieve demonstrable improvements in well-being for children and youth, and share lessons learned.
Goals
The program’s goals are to find new or improved solutions to help children and youth (from this point on referred to as children) in the foster care system with complex needs in culturally and developmentally responsive ways. These services or interventions may help to:
- Treat the effects trauma has on the developing brain.
- This includes:
- helping children to learn self-regulation skills;
- increasing their tolerance for stress and triggers; and
- improving their decision-making skills.
- Provide clinical support to children that help them to:
- improve their mental health outcomes;
- process traumatic memories;
- work through and understand their own specific effects to their trauma;
- manage any sensory issues; and
- begin to heal.
- Build their ability to trust safe adults through:
- relationship building with their foster parents, kinship caregivers, prospective adoptive parents, and biological families, where appropriate; and
- learning how to set safe boundaries.
- Provide a trauma-informed, safe environment by:
- teaching caregivers how to understand the effects of trauma;
- providing methods to care for children through trusting relationships and culturally and developmentally appropriate behavioral interventions; and
- providing support for foster parents through respite care and enrichment activities for children.
- Improve the capacity of child welfare and related systems that come into contact with children to:
- understand, identify, and respond to trauma;
- build systems and networks that provide sensitive and informed ways to work with children with complex needs who have experienced trauma; and
- increase services.
Objectives
The program’s objectives are to develop projects that use and build upon the evidence of effectiveness in existing trauma-informed interventions. Projects should:
- Deeply understand the developmental, mental, and behavioral health needs of children who have experienced trauma and use this knowledge and experience to build innovative, responsive methods for helping children to meet these challenges.
- Lead to improved outcomes for children in foster care, which may include:
- Improvements in children’s assessments.
- Decreases in mental health crises needing to involve emergency care.
- Decreases in behavioral issues associated with an increase in self regulation skills or better management of sensory or other issues.
- An increase in trauma-informed services available in the community.
- Carry out continuous quality improvement activities and outcomes or impact evaluations to build knowledge and evidence about ways to help children in foster care with complex needs who have experienced trauma.
- Provide others who want to help children with replicable models that show positive results.
Focus Areas
- Chronic exposure to trauma from Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) can interfere with early development. It can cause short- and long-term harm to physical, social, and emotional well-being (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2020).
- Research shows that more ACEs increase a child’s risk of negative outcomes. These outcomes include poor physical and mental health, substance use, and risky behaviors. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children may face further exposure to stress from systemic racism or the impacts of poverty resulting from limited educational and economic opportunities.
- All children in foster care can benefit from trauma-informed interventions. But many children with complex mental, behavioral, and physical issues have unique, profound, and compounding needs. These needs are often greater than those the available expertise and resources can meet.
Projects will focus on:
- Providing targeted, innovative, trauma-informed interventions that benefit children in foster care with complex mental, behavioral, and physical health needs.
- Conducting continuous quality improvement and evaluation of traumainformed interventions.
- Regular reporting to ACF on findings, outcomes, and recommendations about sustainable funding and replicable program models
Funding Information
- Estimated Total Program Funding: $2,000,000
- Award Ceiling: $1,000,000
- Award Floor: $750,000
Period of Performance
36 months
Eligible Applicants
- Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education
- Nonprofits that do not have a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education
- Private institutions of higher education
- Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments)
Additional Information on Eligibility
Eligible applicants, according to House Report 117-403 associated with the appropriation of these funds, are nonprofit organizations with demonstrated experience working with children in foster care who have experienced severe trauma. Applicants identifying as nonprofit organizations with demonstrated experience must provide documentation to substantiate their eligibility. Applicants that do not substantiate their eligibility by providing the additional eligibility documentation will be disqualified from review and from funding under this NOFO. The Project Description, Additional Eligibility Documentation within the published NOFO for more information on required documentation. Applications from individuals (including sole proprietorships) and foreign entities are not eligible and will be disqualified from competitive review and funding under this funding opportunity. Faith-based and community organizations that meet the eligibility requirements are eligible to receive awards under this funding opportunity. Faith-based organizations may apply for this award on the same basis as any other organization, as set forth at and, subject to the protections and requirements, ACF will not, in the selection of recipients, discriminate against an organization on the basis of the organization’s religious character, affiliation, or exercise.
For more information, visit Grants.gov.
