Grants

OPRE makes grants to support research in areas such as child care, Head Start and Early Head Start, child welfare, home visiting, welfare and employment, strengthening families and healthy marriage, and family and youth services. We do not make grants to individuals or for direct services.

Grant Forecasts

Behavioral Interventions Scholars

The Behavioral Interventions Scholars grants aim to support research by advanced graduate students using behavioral economics or behavioral science approaches to examine questions of relevance to issues facing low-income and other vulnerable families in the United States and the social services programs and policies that serve them.

Center for Research on African American Children and Families

The Center for Research on African American Children and Families grant will support a research center to lead and support research on the needs of African American populations served by ACF and promising approaches to promoting social and economic well-being among low-income African American populations. This Center would ideally bring together a diverse, inclusive, culturally sensitive, and interdisciplinary team of academic and organizational partners to provide leadership on culturally competent research that can inform policies concerning low-income African American populations and to foster significant scholarship regarding the needs and experiences of the diverse African American population throughout the nation.

Coordinated Evaluations of Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Policies and Initiatives

The Coordinated Evaluations of CCDF Policies and Initiatives research projects will be conducted through partnerships between CCDF lead agencies in states, territories, or tribes and researchers from institutions of higher education, research organizations, and other eligible organizations. The projects will pursue research questions of national and state relevance and conduct evaluations to assess the efficacy of selected child care subsidy policies and quality improvement initiatives that support employment and self-sufficiency outcomes for parents, increase low-income families’ access to high quality child care programs, and promote positive learning and school readiness outcomes for children. The evaluations will be conducted by the grantees and coordinated by an external research organization.

Early Care and Education Research Scholars: Head Start Dissertation Grants

The Head Start Dissertation Grants aim to support dissertation research by advanced graduate students who are working in partnership with Head Start programs and faculty mentors. The grants focus on supporting research that may inform local, state, or federal policy and are relevant to Head Start and other early care and education settings.

Early Care and Education Research Scholars: Child Care Dissertation Grants

The Child Care Dissertation Grants aim to support dissertation research by advanced graduate students who are working in partnership with a Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) agency or administrator and faculty mentor. The grants focus on supporting research that may inform child care policy decision-making and program administration.

Family Self-Sufficiency Demonstration Development Grants

The Family Self-Sufficiency Demonstration Development Grants will aim to support organizations implementing coordinated, client-centered approaches to support low-income families with children on the path to self-sufficiency. The grants will focus on supporting organizations through a planning process for research and evaluation activities related to innovative interventions that build the capacity of individuals who participate in safety net programs.

Human Services Interoperability Innovations

The ACF Human Services Interoperability Innovations (HSII) demonstration grants will aim to expand data sharing efforts by state, local, and tribal governments to improve human services program delivery, and to identify novel data sharing approaches that can be replicated in other jurisdictions. The grants will focus on addressing longstanding barriers to interoperability, including data standards, technology, business, legal, organizational, and process-oriented factors.

Improve Capacity for Administrative Data Sharing and Analysis: Child and Caregiver Outcomes Using Linked Data, Expanded (CCOULD X)

The Child and Caregiver Outcomes Using Linked Data, Expanded (CCOULDX) project will aim to support research by facilitating the exchange and linkage of medical, eligibility, administrative, and other programmatic data for children and families served by both child welfare and Medicaid. Major activities of this project would include data sharing, data linkage methodology development and review, data quality review, disclosure review and de-identification, analysis of outcomes of interest, archiving of data for secondary data use, and documentation of lessons learned.