The purpose of the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Competitive Grant program is to award Development Grants to States that currently have modest home visiting programs and want to build on existing efforts.

Successful applicants will sufficiently demonstrate the capacity

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to expand or enhance their evidence-based home visiting programs.

The funding provided will build on the formula funding already provided to States and territories to support the quality implementation of home visiting programs.

Additionally, this funding opportunity will continue the program's emphasis on rigorous research by grounding the proposed work in relevant empirical literature, and by including requirements to evaluate work proposed under this grant.

In Fiscal Year (FY) 2012, approximately $12,000,000 will be available to support competitive Development Grants to eligible States and jurisdictions under the MIECHV program.

$125,000,000 will be awarded on a formula basis to grantees funded under HRSA-11-187 for the MIECHV program.

Successful applicants will be awarded FY 2012 competitive Development Grant funds, in addition to the FY2012 MIECHV formula based funds.

Priority for Serving High-Risk Populations and Programmatic Areas of Emphasis As directed in the legislation , successful applicants will give priority to providing services to the following populations:
a) Eligible families who reside in communities in need of such services, as identified in the statewide needs assessment required under subsection (b)(1)(A).

b) Low-income eligible families.

c) Eligible families who are pregnant women who have not attained age 2 1. d) Eligible families that have a history of child abuse or neglect or have had interactions with child welfare services.

e) Eligible families that have a history of substance abuse or need substance abuse treatment.

f) Eligible families that have users of tobacco products in the home.

g) Eligible families that are or have children with low student achievement.

h) Eligible families with children with developmental delays or disabilities.

i) Eligible families who, or that include individuals who, are serving or formerly served in the Armed Forces, including such families that have members of the Armed Forces who have had multiple deployments outside of the United States." In addition, the Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) and the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) have identified the following programmatic areas of emphasis.

Applicants may propose to address one or more of these areas in response to this funding opportunity announcement:
o Emphasis 1:
Improvements in maternal, child, and family health o Emphasis 2:
Effective implementation and expansion of evidence-based home visiting programs or systems with fidelity to the evidence-based model selected o Emphasis 3:
Development of statewide or multi-State home visiting programs o Emphasis 4:
Development of comprehensive early childhood systems that span the prenatal-through-age-eight continuum o Emphasis 5:
Outreach to high-risk and hard-to-engage populations o Emphasis 6:
Development of a family-centered approach to home visiting o Emphasis 7:
Outreach to families in rural or frontier areas o Emphasis 8:
The development of fiscal leveraging strategies to enhance program sustainability For a more detailed description of each area of emphasis, please see Appendix A:
MIECHV Programmatic Emphasis Areas.