Tribal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program: Guidance for Submitting an Annual Report to the Secretary

As part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 (Public Law 117-328). Section 511 of Title V of the Social Security Act authorizes the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to award grants to Indian tribes (or a consortium of Indian tribes), tribal organizations, or urban Indian organizations to conduct an early childhood home visiting program. The legislation sets aside 6 percent of the total Maternal, Infant, Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) appropriation for grants to tribal entities and requires that the tribal grants, to the greatest extent practicable, be consistent with the requirements of the MIECHV grants to states and territories and include conducting a needs assessment and establishing benchmarks. The goals of the Tribal Home Visiting Program are to support healthy, happy, successful American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) children and families through a coordinated, high-quality, evidence-based home visiting strategy, and to continue to build the evidence base for home visiting in tribal communities. The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the agencies collaborating to implement the MIECHV program within HHS, also intend for the program to result in a coordinated system of early childhood home visiting in tribal communities that has the capacity to provide infrastructure and supports to assure high-quality, evidence-based practice. The Tribal Home Visiting discretionary grants support cooperative agreements to conduct community needs assessments; plan for and implement high-quality, culturally grounded, evidence-based home visiting programs in at-risk tribal communities; establish, measure, and report on progress toward meeting performance measures in six legislatively mandated benchmark areas; and participate in rigorous evaluation activities to build the knowledge base on home visiting among Native populations. After the first grant year, Tribal Home Visiting grant recipients must comply with the legislative requirement to submit an Annual Report to the Secretary that should feature activities carried out under the program during the past reporting period. To assist grant recipients with meeting these requirements, ACF created guidance for grant recipients to use when writing their annual reports. Previously, the guidance included information about both the annual and the final reports from grant recipients. This request includes updates to the guidance to make it specific to just the annual reports while we determine if the annual report guidance could be used for the final report. If it is decided that guidance specific to the final report would be beneficial, we will submit a request to OMB in the future. We have also revised the annual report to streamline significantly and align with the previous estimated burden. At this time, we are requesting to extend approval of this information collection for an additional three years with the changes implemented.

The latest form for Tribal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program: Guidance for Submitting an Annual Report to the Secretary expires 2027-10-31 and can be found here.

Guidance for Submitting Annual Reports to the Secretary

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