Department of Health and Human Services Family Connection Grants: Facilitating Family Engagement for Children and Youth

The effectiveness of integrated programs of intensive Family-finding activities and Family Group Decision-making (FGDM) meetings in supporting connections with family members for the target population of children/youth; and
How family members will be engaged in building their capacity to meet the needs of children/youth in their care.

Under the provisions of the funding legislation, these grant programs will conduct:

Intensive Family-Finding activities, which utilize search technology, effective family engagement, and other means to locate biological family members for children/youth in the Child Welfare (CW) system, and once identified, work to establish/re-establish relationships and explore ways to establish a permanent family placement for them; and
FGDM meetings, which enable families to make decisions and develop plans that nurture children and protect them from abuse and neglect, and when appropriate, address domestic violence issues in a safe manner.

Projects will employ rigorous local evaluations to demonstrate how this approach will improve outcomes related to safety, permanency and well-being for the target population of children and youth. As demonstration projects, grantee programs will serve as identifiable sites that other States and locales, seeking to implement family connection services for this population, can look to for guidance, insight, and possible replication.
Grantees are required to meet a non-Federal share of the total approved project costs, in accordance with Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008. Grantees must provide at least 25 percent of the total approved cost of the project for the first two years of the project period, and 50 percent of the total approved cost of the project in the third year of the project period. The total approved cost of the project is the sum of the ACF Federal share and the non-Federal share. The non-Federal share may be met by cash or in-kind contributions. No more than 50 percent of the non-Federal share may be made up of in-kind contributions.
NOTE: This is one of three separate 2012 HHS Forecast announcements under the Family Connection Discretionary Grants Program, CFDA Number: 93.605:

Child Welfare/TANF Collaboration in Kinship Navigation Programs;
Combination Family-finding/Family Group Decision-making Programs;
Comprehensive Residential Family Treatment Programs.