The purpose of this announcement is to solicit applications for the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Competitive Grant program.  Competitive Grants provide funds to eligible entities that are states and certain territories that continue to make significant progress under

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the MIECHV program towards implementing a high-quality home visiting program as part of a comprehensive, high-quality early childhood system and are ready and able to take effective programs to scale to address unmet need.[1]  Grantees will use the funds to provide ongoing support to high-quality evidence-based home visiting programs and for the incremental expansion of evidence-based home visiting programs funded, in whole or in part, by the MIECHV program to achieve greater enrollment and retention of families eligible for home visiting.  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.

  Priority for Serving High-Risk Populations and Programmatic Areas of Emphasis As directed in the authorizing legislation,[2] successful applicants will give priority to providing services under the MIECHV program 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 511(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.¿ All applications should address increasing capacity, enrollment, and retention in high-risk communities identified in the statewide needs assessment, including those currently served through state or Federal home visiting programs.

 For this purpose, the following programmatic areas of emphasis have been identified.

 Applicants should address one or more of these areas in response to this funding opportunity announcement:
·         Emphasis 1:
Improvements in maternal, child, and family health  ·         Emphasis 2:
Effective expansion of evidence-based home visiting programs or systems, with fidelity to the evidence-based model selected ·         Emphasis 3:
Development of statewide or multi-state home visiting program innovations that effectively increase enrollment and retention ·         Emphasis 4:
Development of comprehensive early childhood systems that span the prenatal-through-age-five continuum ·         Emphasis 5:
Outreach to high-risk and hard-to-engage populations ·         Emphasis 6:
Development of a family-centered approach to home visiting ·         Emphasis 7:
Outreach to families in rural or frontier areas ·         Emphasis 8:
The development of fiscal leveraging strategies to enhance program sustainability Note:  Fidelity is defined as a grantee¿s adherence to model developer requirements for implementation.

 These requirements include all aspects of initiating and implementing a home visiting model, including, but not limited to:
recruiting and retaining clients, providing initial and ongoing training, supervision, and professional development for staff, establishing a management information system to track data related to fidelity and services, and establishing an integrated resource and referral network to support client needs.  Changes to an evidence-based model that alter the components related to program outcomes could undermine the program¿s effectiveness.  Such changes (otherwise known as ¿drift¿) will not be allowed under the funding allocated for evidence-based models.  Adaptations that alter the core components related to program impacts may be funded with funds available for promising approaches if the state wishes to implement the program as a promising approach instead of as an acceptable adaptation of an evidence-based model.  Per the authorizing legislation, grantees may expend not more than 25 percent of the amount of the grant awarded to an entity for a fiscal year for purposes of conducting a program using a service delivery model that qualifies as a promising approach; therefore, the majority of grant funds awarded for a fiscal year (i.e., formula and competitive funds combined) must be used to conduct activities that apply evidence-based home visiting models.

For a more detailed description of each area of emphasis, please see Appendix A:
MIECHV Programmatic Emphasis Areas.

[1] The intention here is to maintain or incrementally expand existing home visiting programs which have proven to be effective, to eligible families or communities.

[2]Social Security Act, Title V, Section 511(d)(4).