Collaborative Approaches to Adoption for Children with Complex Needs

This funding opportunity aims to support innovations that build evidence on how to help children and youth with complex or high-acuity needs achieve permanency through adoption. The projects will focus on collaborative, system-level efforts to recruit, train, support, and retain families who can meet these children's needs. Projects must be led by researchers who work within a child welfare agency or work in close partnership with one or more child welfare agencies. • The purpose of this funding opportunity is to implement and evaluate collaborative approaches to support permanency through adoption for children and youth with complex or high-acuity needs. • Collaborations that include Medicaid Section 1115 Research and Demonstration Projects, private adoption agencies, or community- or faith-based organizations are of particular interest. • Award recipients will be expected to study how the model works in practice 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.