The federal fiscal year 2015 (FFY2015) competitive grant application was submitted on October 17th and the year 6 formula grant application was submitted on October 31st. Awards for both are to be confirmed prior to March 1, 2015. The project periods for these funds will be March 1, 2015 - September 30, 2017 (two years and seven months).  Thank you to all who contributed to the process.

 In the FFY2015 formula grant application, we reported on recent activities and updated projected plans.  The annual allocation for Kansas is $1,056,142.  These funds will be to sustain the base formula-funded services in the initial two targeted communities, Wyandotte County and Montgomery County for approximately a one-year period.

 For the competitive grant, $9.4 million, the maximum possible, was requested to cover the project period.  The Kansas proposal has three focused goals: (1) Increase home visiting capacity and enrollment to serve more at-risk families; (2) Improve child and maternal outcomes through enhanced interventions; and (3) Enhance home visiting system and service coordination. Objectives and activities include:

• Maintain and expand the capacity of the three evidence-based models (Parents as Teachers, Healthy Families, and Early Head Start) and the promising approach (TIES- Teams for Infants Endangered by Substance Abuse), as well as the coordinated outreach and referral systems (Connections and My Family) in the current targeted communities, Wyandotte County and Southeast Kansas.  This includes maintaining enrollment caseloads previously supported by the MIECHV development grant as well as further expansion of caseload capacity.  In Southeast Kansas, this will include expansion from the three counties - Montgomery, Labette, and Cherokee - to five with the addition of Wilson and Neosho counties.  Some new caseloads in both areas will prioritize employment of bilingual home visitors to better serve non-English speaking families.  We project to serve 632 families (461 new, 171 continuing).

• Expand and increase efforts to effectively serve at-risk families through coordinated and targeted interventions to address healthcare access, mental health, and domestic violence services.  This will include training for MIECHV staff to enhance linkages of families with health care coverage and medical homes, adding a bilingual therapist to expand the Moving Beyond Depression services to more Spanish-speaking Wyandotte County mothers, providing mental health training and consultation services for home visiting programs, and implementing training and technical assistance to improve domestic violence screening, referrals, and safety planning for enrolled home visiting families.

• Enhance statewide home visiting system infrastructure components: a) Coordinated intake, and referral systems to increase outreach, enrollment and engagement into home visiting services; b) State capacity and sustainability of quality home visiting services; c) Home visiting outcomes report card to track progress and successes for children and families served by evidence-based home visiting programs to enable data-informed decision-making at local, state and national levels; d) Communication of the value and benefits of home visiting to improve access, enrollment and retention; and e) Professional development systems to ensure home visiting staff are highly trained and prepared to deliver services with fidelity and to diverse populations.

• Conduct a rigorous mixed-methods implementation and impact evaluation to assess home visiting delivery, fidelity, and impact on child, maternal, and family outcomes.

•  Across all local, state, and federal funding sources, Kansas has been able to provide high quality evidence-based home visiting (EBHV) services to only 15% of the total at-risk families in our highest need counties.