Grants

Behavioral Interventions Scholars

Behavioral Interventions Scholars award support dissertation research by advanced graduate students who are using approaches grounded in behavioral science to examine specific research questions of relevance to social services programs and policies. Behavioral science seeks to understand how individuals make decisions and what drives their behavior, drawing on the fields of behavioral, social, and cognitive psychology; economics; and other social sciences. These awards are meant to build the body of research that applies a behavioral science lens to social services for families with low incomes in the United States, and to support faculty mentorship of high-quality doctoral students. Applicants will be required to demonstrate how their research is grounded in behavioral science and the applicability of their research to practice or policy serving children, adults, and families with low incomes, especially those that seek to improve their well-being. Specific topics of interest may be delineated in the full Notice of Funding Opportunity. 

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Career Pathways Secondary Data Analysis Awards

ACF plans to fund Career Pathways Secondary Data Analysis Awards to support rigorous secondary analysis of data collected to evaluate a collection of career pathways programs. Through these awards, the field will better understand the effectiveness of career pathway programs funded by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs that aim to address the employment and self-sufficiency needs of TANF recipients and those eligible for or at risk of TANF receipt. Career pathways programs provide post-secondary education and training organized as a series of manageable steps leading to successively higher credentials and employment opportunities in growing occupations. Programs also provide financial, academic, and non-academic support to help primarily non-traditional students with low incomes enroll and persist in education. Career pathways can offer an efficient and client-centered approach to career and technical education and training by connecting adult basic education, occupational training, postsecondary education, and supportive services. Data from studies of career pathways programs overseen by OPRE are available for secondary analysis through the Child and Family Data Archive (https://www.childandfamilydataarchive.org ). Additional data from the evaluation of the second round of HPOG (HPOG 2.0 National Evaluation) will be made available for secondary analysis on a rolling basis as data collection efforts progress.

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Center for Research on Coordinated Service Approaches to Support Whole Families

OPRE is forecasting a Center for Research on Coordinated Service Approaches to Support Whole Families (the Center). The Center will conduct and strengthen research on the intentional coordination of human services to support the social and economic well-being of whole families. There is renewed interest in coordinated services supported by growing evidence that antipoverty programs that provide services for both parents and children can have positive effects on certification, employment, income, and psychological well-being of parents and even on children’s attendance in early childhood programs (Piña, Moore, Sacks, & McClay, 2022; Wright, Rhodes, & Abner, 2021). Many questions remain on how to provide services to whole families that are sufficiently intensive and intentionally coordinated and build the evidence base. The Center will bring together a team that has experience investigating coordinated service approaches to support whole families, assessing the needs and experiences of families with low incomes and those from underserved communities, developing and testing measures for rigorous research and evaluation, building research/evaluation capacity, and conducting research in partnership with state/territory/tribal agencies that administer the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) programs. Through a combination of research, research capacity building, and communication activities, the Center will address a range of relevant issues including: research that sheds light on the experiences of individuals, children, and families who participate in or are the intended recipients of coordinated service initiatives; strengthening coordinated services initiatives through formative evaluation; and addressing measurement needs that will advance the field’s knowledge of the processes and outcomes of intentional coordination of services for whole families. The Center will focus on the intentional coordination of services funded by TANF and CCDF, including child care and early education for children and employment services, education, and training for adults, that aim to improve families’ economic mobility and children's healthy development and learning.
Research funds that are connected to TANF and CCDF will support the Center’s work. The Center’s resources and activities will be dedicated proportionately to reflect the purposes of these funding streams.

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Child Care and Early Education Research Connections

 The Child Care and Early Education Research Connections award will support improving access to research and policy-related information for the child care and early education field, specifically Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) lead agency staff and their partners. The recipient will establish and operate a resource website for the Child Care and Early Education Research Connections library database ( Research Connections). The interactive website (http://www.researchconnections.org ) will house a comprehensive and up-to-date database of resources derived from rigorous research, including scholarly peer-reviewed research and ’gray’ literature (e.g., rigorous research published as policy briefs, state and federal government reports, foundation reports), as well as relevant publicly available assessment instruments. Research should be relevant to community based child care serving children birth through 13-years, child care and early education (CCEE) programs, home-based child care, family child care, Head Start, public pre-kindergarten, and after-school programs. The early care and education field looks to Research Connections to gather information on research and policy-relevant topics.

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Child Care Policy Research Partnerships: Evaluating Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Lead Agencies’ Consumer Education Strategies

The Child Care Policy Research Partnerships: Evaluating Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Lead Agencies’ Consumer Education Strategies funding opportunity will support research partnerships between state, territory, and tribal CCDF Lead Agencies and institutions with demonstrated research capacity to rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of lead agencies’ consumer education strategies that are designed to help parents make informed choices about their children’s early care and education. In the 2014 CCDF reauthorization included provisions to help support parents make more informed choices. The field calls this work “consumer education strategies” and the goal of these grants is to rigorously study the effectiveness of consumer education strategies. To ensure that the funded work is timely and relevant, the CCDF Lead Agency and their research partners must collaborate actively throughout all phases of the project. Award recipients will be expected to perform the following activities: (1) Conduct a rigorous summative evaluation that uses an experimental approach or an approach that lends itself to strong causal inference; (2) Engage relevant entities, groups, and/or individuals with lived experience in the research process (e.g., child care resource & referral agencies, parents with young children), as appropriate; (3) Collaborate with federal staff and participate in a consortium that will meet and communicate regularly to identify opportunities to coordinate and to develop collective expertise and resources for the field; (4) Disseminate knowledge and insights gained from the evaluations to a broad range of audiences at the local, state, and national levels.

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Child Care Policy Research Partnerships: Effects of CCDF Provider and Family Friendly Policies

Child Care Policy Research Partnership (CCPRP) awards will support research partnerships between Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Lead Agencies in states, territories, or Tribes and organizations with demonstrated research capacity. Funded projects are expected to pursue research questions of current relevance to the CCDF Lead Agency partner and add to the broader knowledge base about the efficacy of child care subsidy policies. CCDF Lead Agencies in states, territories, and Tribes must comply with the requirements set forth in the CCDBG Act and corresponding ACF-issued rules and regulations found at 45 CFR Parts 98 and 99. Lead Agencies set their own, detailed CCDF policies within these broader federal requirements (45 CFR 98.1(a)(1)). As required by CCDBG, CCDF Lead Agencies must submit a CCDF Plan capturing a description of how they will implement the CCDF program over a three-year cycle (45 CFR 98.14). This iteration of the CCPRP awards will prioritize rigorous evaluations of Lead Agencies’ implementation of their approved 2025-2027 CCDF Plans. It is an ideal time to understand the challenges that states, territories, and Tribes face revising their programs, as well as evaluate the implementation and/or impact of fully implementing their approved plans. Research is needed to understand whether and how these program changes affect families and providers. Sponsored projects will be expected to participate in a community of practice that will meet and communicate regularly to identify opportunities for coordination and to develop collective expertise and resources for the field. This collaboration will support research capacity and learning within individual projects and across recipients.

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Child Welfare Research Partnerships: Understanding Data Use Practices for Continuous Improvement

 The Child Welfare Research Partnerships opportunity is designed to fund cooperative agreements to support partnerships among research organizations and title IV-E agencies, which include state and participating territories and tribes. The goal is to better understand emerging and promising approaches for generating, processing, and applying data evidence to support the use of data and research to strengthen child welfare programs. This work is in line with Section 476 of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 676 (a)) which directs the Secretary to provide technical assistance to States and shall periodically evaluate the programs under this part and part B of the subchapter. Supported research must include active collaboration throughout all phases of the project. The partnerships are intended to advance knowledge and build site specific capacity for generating data evidence that can address questions related to practice, outcomes, and/or system operations. ACF is particularly interested in understanding how title IV-E agencies and partner organizations are using or could use data collected in their existing information management systems to support decision-making related to system operations and/or program development/implementation and/or practice improvements intended to meet the needs of children and families.

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Early Care and Education Research Scholars: Child Care Dissertation Grants

OPRE plans to solicit applications for Early Care and Education Research Scholars: Child Care Dissertation Grants. Funds support dissertation research by advanced graduate students working on child care policy issues in partnership with a Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) agency or administrator and with faculty mentors. These grants focus on building capacity in the research field by addressing questions relevant to child care policy decision-making and program administration and fostering mentoring relationships between faculty members and doctoral students. OPRE is interested in research that addresses issues of significance related to CCDF; aims to inform policy decisions and solutions, particularly for populations that are underserved/understudied; and utilizes the most rigorous research methodology for the selected research question. Applicants must consult with a CCDF agency or administrator in the conceptualization of the research plan, from development and refinement of the research questions, through the proposed data collection or secondary analyses of data, interpretation, and dissemination of findings.
administrator in the conceptualization of the research plan, from development and refinement of the research questions, through the proposed data collection or secondary analyses of data, interpretation, and dissemination of findings.administrator in the conceptualization of the research plan, from development and refinement of the research questions, through the proposed data collection or secondary analyses of data, interpretation, and dissemination of findings.

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Early Care and Education Research Scholars: Head Start Dissertation Grants

OPRE plans to solicit applications for Early Care and Education Research Scholars: Head Start Dissertation Grants. Funds support dissertation research by advanced graduate students working in partnership with Head Start programs and with faculty mentors. These awards focus on building capacity in the research field by: (1) addressing questions relevant to early childhood programs that serve children and families with low-income, (2) supporting applied experience with collaboration with participating program partners, and (3) fostering mentoring relationships between faculty members and doctoral students. OPRE is interested in research that directly informs local, state, or federal policies and is relevant to multiple early care and education settings. Applicants must demonstrate an established partnership with their Head Start program partner(s) (and other early care and education program partners if applicable) that should be apparent throughout the research plan, from development and refinement of the research questions through the proposed data collection or secondary analyses of data, interpretation, and dissemination of findings.
Statutory Authority: Head Start Act as amended by the Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007 (IHSSRA) (P.L. 110 134); § 640 [42 U.S.C. § 9835] and § 649 [42 U.S.C. § 9844]; appropriated by the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024.
Excerpt § 649 Research, Demonstrations, and Evaluation
(a) IN GENERAL.--
(1) REQUIREMENT; GENERAL PURPOSES.--The Secretary shall carry out a continuing program of research, demonstration, and evaluation activities, in order to--
(A) foster continuous improvement in the quality of the Head Start programs under this subchapter and in their effectiveness in enabling participating children and their families to succeed in school and otherwise; and
(B) use the Head Start programs to develop, test, and disseminate new ideas based on existing scientifically valid research, for addressing the needs of low-income preschool children (including children with disabilities, homeless children, children who have been abused or neglected, and children in foster care) and their families and communities (including demonstrations of innovative non-center-based program models such as home-based and mobile programs), and otherwise to further the purposes of this subchapter. 

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Family Self Sufficiency and Research Network

The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) plans to invite applications for Principal Investigators to join the Family Self-Sufficiency and Stability Research Network. The goal of this program of cooperative agreements is to support productive partnerships between social science scholars and state or local human services agencies. In addition to pursuing their individual programs of rigorous and relevant research, scholars will participate in a multi-disciplinary learning community by collaborating with other members of the Network. Competitive applications will propose a partnership with a State or local agency responsible for administering benefits or programming funded by the TANF block grant; pursue social science research that could directly inform local, state, or federal human services policy to improve family economic self-sufficiency and stability, and identify areas of interest for potential collaborative work with other Network Scholars.

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Measurement of Reflective Supervision in Home Visiting: Research and Evaluation Grants

OPRE plans to solicit applications for Reflective Supervision Measurement in Home Visiting: Research and Evaluation Grants. The latest reauthorization of MIECHV called for research on the home visiting workforce including the provision of workforce support, retention and case management. This grant opportunity will provide funding to address research and evaluation questions related to reflective supervision, a specific workforce support in the early childhood home visiting field, using a new measure developed under OPRE’s Supporting and Strengthening the Home Visiting Workforce project. Specifically, these awards will support work to conduct further testing of the measure to enhance its rigor, applicability to other settings, or utility for practice; develop tools to facilitate use of the measure in practice settings for quality improvement; and/or use the measure to test the relationship between reflective supervision practices and desired outcomes. Findings from these awards are intended to inform measurement of reflective supervision practices and be disseminated to end users in the field such as researchers, home visiting administrators, and model developers.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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