Administration for Children and Families December 2016 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), announces its intent to award a cooperative agreement of up to $3,311,087 as a single-source expansion supplements to the Post Release Services Programs within the Unaccompanied Children's (UC) Program. The expansion supplement grants will support the immediate need for additional post-release services to accommodate the increasing number of UCs being referred by DHS, and as a result, the increase of UCs referred for post-release services. The increase in the UC population necessitates the need for expansion of services to expedite the release of UC. The Flores v. Reno settlement agreement requires that requires the timely release of children and youth to qualified parents, guardians, relatives or other adults, referred to as ``sponsors.''

This rule is intended to carry out the President's directives in Executive Order 13563: Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review. The final rule will make Child Support Enforcement program operations and enforcement procedures more flexible, more effective, and more efficient by recognizing the strength of existing State enforcement programs, advancements in technology that can enable improved collection rates, and the move toward electronic communication and document management. This final rule will improve and simplify program operations, and remove outmoded limitations to program innovations to better serve families. In addition, the final rule clarifies and corrects technical provisions in existing regulations. The rule makes significant changes to the regulations on case closure, child support guidelines, and medical support enforcement. It will improve child support collection rates because support orders will reflect the noncustodial parent's ability to pay support, and more noncustodial parents will support their children.

The Social Security Act (the Act) requires that ACF regulate a national data collection system that provides comprehensive demographic and case-specific information on children who are in foster care and adopted. This final rule replaces existing Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) regulations and the appendices to require title IV-E agencies to collect and report data to ACF on children in out-of-home care, and who exit out-of-home care to adoption or legal guardianship, children in out-of-home care who are covered by the Indian Child Welfare Act, and children who are covered by a title IV-E adoption or guardianship assistance agreement.

ACF, ORR, announces the award of five single-source low-cost extension supplement grants for a total of $19,604,765 under the UC Program.

The Office of Head Start will delay the compliance date for background checks procedures described in the Head Start Program Performance Standards final rule that was published in the Federal Register on September 6, 2016. We are taking this action to afford programs more time to implement systems that meet the background checks procedures and to align with deadlines for states complying with background check requirements found in the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act of 2014.

Statement of Organizations, Functions, and Delegations of Authority. The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) has added the title Deputy Assistant Secretary for Native American Affairs to Commissioner, Administration for Native Americans position.