Collaborative Approaches to Adoption for Children with Complex Needs
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The Children's Bureau, under the Administration for Children and Families, is seeking to fund projects that test and build evidence for collaborative models aimed at improving permanent adoption outcomes for children and youth with complex or high-acuity needs, including those who are medically fragile or have significant behavioral, emotional, or medical challenges. These projects must focus on system-level strategies to recruit, train, support, and retain adoptive families capable of meeting these specialized needs, with an emphasis on sustainable, community-based partnerships that integrate services across child welfare, health, and education systems. Collaborations that include Medicaid Section 1115 demonstrations and private adoption agencies are particularly encouraged, as they can help expand access to critical supports such as respite care, specialized interventions, and caseworker training. Award recipients will be required to conduct both implementation and outcome evaluations using rigorous research designs and methods, ensuring that findings are robust and actionable. A strong theory of change must underpin all project activities, guiding the structure of the intervention and the associated research agenda. The goal is not only to identify effective practices but also to understand how and why they work in real-world settings, ultimately leading to scalable solutions that increase permanent placements for some of the most vulnerable children in the child welfare system. The opportunity is open to entities that can demonstrate the capacity to execute complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives with high methodological standards, and inquiries should be directed to the designated point of contact at the Administration for Children and Families.
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Full Description
The Children's Bureau will fund projects that will test and build evidence for collaborative approaches to improving permanency through adoption for children and youth with complex or high-acuity needs, such as medically fragile children. The projects will focus on system-level efforts to recruit, train, support, and retain families who can meet these children's behavioral, medical, or emotional needs.
Researchers and child welfare program staff will implement and evaluate promising collaborative approaches to achieving stable, permanent adoptive homes for children and youth with complex or high-acuity behavioral, medical, or emotional needs.
Collaborative approaches must include strategies to recruit, train, support, and retain specialized adoptive homes equipped to meet the needs of children and youth with complex or high-acuity needs. These approaches may also include a variety of additional strategies, such as specialized interventions for children and families; support services and respite care for families; training for caseworkers; collaborative, community-based services; and coordination with state and local health and education agencies. Of particular interest are collaborations that include Medicaid Section 1115 Research and Demonstration Projects to support potential adoptive families, including foster and kinship caregivers who may be interested in adoption, as well as collaborations that include private adoption agencies.
Award recipients will be expected to study how the model works in practice (i.e., implementation study) and evaluate the effectiveness of the approach, using the most rigorous research designs, methods, and analytic techniques that are appropriate and sufficient to address the research questions of interest. Applicants will be required to submit a strong theory of change to guide all aspects of implementation and the research design.