Youth Services Insider expects to see a solicitation for about $350 million from the Department of Health and Human Services for providers that can handle an array of services for unaccompanied immigrant youth.
These are youth who are discovered to have been smuggled into the country by immigration officials. We used to deal with them as a law enforcement problem, but an arrangement was reached in the early 2000s to refer unaccompanied children to HHS instead.
This is not a new pot of money, but it’s a much bigger pot. The total appropriation of funds to the Unaccompanied Minors program jumped from $268 million to $868 million this year; click here for our explanation as to why that happened.
Click here to read the guidance from last year. Bottom line: HHS will want organizations that come to the table with residential capacity and either a strong ability to either partner up on or directly provide mental health and nutrition services.
Youth Services Insider is mostly written by Chronicle Editor-in-Chief John Kelly