Evaluation of Behavioral Interventions for Child Support Services Grants

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is modified. The link to OCSE's FOA "Behavioral Interventions for Child Support Services" HHS-2014-ACF-OCSE-FD-0818 is corrected in the Grants.gov Synopsis and in the FOA's Executive Summary section. The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) anticipates awarding a cooperative agreement to evaluate and provide technical assistance to grantees awarded under the funding announcement “Behavioral Interventions for Child Support Services” (BICS), HHS-2014-ACF-OCSE-FD-0818, which can be viewed online at http://www.acf.gov/grants/open/foa/view/HHS-2014-ACF-OCSE-FD-0818. The grants under this partner announcement will be awarded to explore potential relevance and application of behavioral principles to child support services. BICS grantees will test behaviorally-informed interventions focused on areas such as modification, right-sizing orders, family-centered services, and other service-focused innovations. This cooperative agreement will allow the selected state agency to use this federal grant award and the Federal Financial Participation associated with Section 1115 grant funds to procure and manage technical assistance and evaluation of the BICS grantees through an independent third-party evaluator (i.e., a university or research firm). The selected evaluator will work through the child support processes of each grantee and identify ways to improve, and evaluate the process interventions and outcomes of each intervention. The state agency awarded funds under this announcement shall be responsible for the management and oversight of the third-party evaluator. Over the 5-year grant period, the first year will be a planning year devoted to start-up and development of the program design, interventions will be tested for a 3-year period, and the final year will be evaluation and close-out of the project. OCSE expects to award a total of $2,080,000 in Section 1115 funds to this cooperative agreement over the 5-year project period. Award ceiling in FY 2014 and 2015 is $800,000. Award ceiling in FY 2016, FY 2017 and FY 2018 is $160,000.