Request for Proposals for Promising Practices: Family Home Visiting (Minnesota)

The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) seeks proposals from Tribal Nations, non-profit organizations, and county governments to plan and implement promising practices home visiting services to Minnesota families in need.

Donor Name: Minnesota Department of Health (MDH)

Deadline: 01/27/2023

Size of the Grant: $250,000

Grant Duration: 2 years

Details:

This Request for Proposals (RFP) seeks to expand access to community-based family home visiting programs for priority and hard to reach populations.

These programs will address some of Minnesota’s greatest disparities related to family home visiting access for hard-to-reach families.

The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) seeks proposals from Tribal Nations, non-profit organizations, and county governments to plan and implement promising practices home visiting services to Minnesota families in need. The goals of the Promising Practices Family Home Visiting program are to:

• Improve and promote parental and child health.
• Enhance positive parenting practices.
• Prevent child abuse and neglect.
• Reduce crime and intimate partner violence.
• Improve family experiences with reunification.
• Promote children’s development and readiness to participate in school.
• Connect families to needed community resources and supports.
• Increase family economic self-sufficiency.

Health Equity Priorities

State of Minnesota policies aim to ensure fairness, precision, equity, and consistency in competitive grant award processes. This includes use of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) principles in grant-making. MDH intentionally identifies how grant programs will serve diverse populations, especially populations experiencing inequities and/or health disparities.

Goals

The overarching goal of the Promising Practices Family Home Visiting program is to equip pregnant people, parents, and other caregivers with the knowledge, skills, and tools to achieve a healthy birth and to help their children be physically, socially, and emotionally healthy, safe, and ready to succeed in school. Overall aims of the Promising Practices program are to:

• Increase access to home visiting services that are culturally and linguistically responsive to the needs of the priority populations served.
• Identify families in need of flexible non-model home visiting services in terms of settings (jails, shelters, treatment centers), periodicity (frequency of visits), or approaches (use of doulas, certified lactation counselors, peer support recovery specialists, or adapted FHV models).
• Implement promising practice approaches that enhance positive parenting practices.
• Improve access to screenings for child abuse and intimate partner violence to prevent negative experiences related to healthy infant and child development.
• Improve coordination of community resources and support services for transitional or hard to reach families to promote and improve parental and child health.
• Sustain promising practice home visiting programs for priority populations in Minnesota

This grant program will prioritize promising practices family home visiting services for:

• Families experiencing housing insecurity or homelessness.
• Families impacted by incarceration.
• Families experiencing substance use disorder (SUD).
• Families experiencing serious persistent mental illness (SPMI).
• Families experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) or currently living in a domestic violence shelter.
• Black, Indigenous, and families of color with limited access to evidence-based or other family home visiting services.

Funding Information

• Estimated Amount to Grant: $1.5 million per year
• Estimated Award Maximum $250,000 per year
• Estimated Award Minimum $100,000 per year

Project Period

This RFP is for a two-year grant period from 7/1/2023 to 6/30/2025.

Eligibility Criteria

Eligible applicants include Tribal Nations, non-profit organizations, and community health boards (CHBs). Applicants must be located in and conduct grant activities in the state of Minnesota. Applicants must have state or federal recognition as a formal organization or entity, such as a Minnesota Tax ID or Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) number. Organizations or groups that do not have state or federal recognition must apply with a fiscal agent. Applicants that are debarred or suspended by the State of Minnesota or the Federal Government are not eligible.

• Tribal Nation, non-profit organization, or CHB not currently implementing any family home visiting program.
• Tribal Nation, non-profit organization, or CHB currently implementing a flexible non model family home visiting program.
• Tribal Nation, non-profit organization, or CHB currently receiving Strong Foundations (Evidence-Based Home Visiting) or TANF funding from MDH to provide family home visiting services.

For more information, visit Promising Practices: Family Home Visiting.