Data on funding for prevention of child abuse through family services (PCA-TFS)

Janet Rosenzweig, Harvard’s Kennedy SchoolBill Levis, Urban Institute

Purpose of ResearchExplore potential improvements in the

classification by activity of data on grants made by federal agencies to all recipients in a specific state. For Example…..

identify all funds coming into all states for activities related to the prevention of child abuse through family support services

identify all funds coming into a specific state, by location and category

Focus of ResearchChild Abuse Prevention through family support

is a prime example of a public service area that crosses disciplinary boundaries.

Relevant funding is available from multiple federal agencies.

CFDA codes are the only categorical search.

FFATAWWW.USASpending.gov

Searchable database of grants, contracts and other types of federal contracts, assistance and other payments.

Purpose of grant is identified by CFDA code, which does not articulate what activities the recipient is conducting.

Example: CFDA Codes relevant to family support services – manual search results HHS only93.551: Abandoned Infants93.995: Adolescent Family Life Demonstration Pr

ojects93.670: Child Abuse and Neglect Discretionary A

ctivities93.643: Children's Justice Grants to States93.974: Family Planning Service Delivery Improv

ement Research Grants93.926: Healthy Start Initiative93.136: Injury Prevention and Control Research a

nd State and Community Based Programs93.556: Promoting Safe and Stable Families

Example, continued: Non HHS CFDA codes10.573: Homeless Children’s Nutrition Program AG84.335: Child Care Access Means Parents in School E D84.360: Dropout Prevention Programs ED84.310: Parental Assistance Centers

ED16.730: Reduction and Prevention of Children's Exposure to Violenc

e

Justice16.523: Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block Grants16.547: Victims of Child Abuse

Justice

USASpending.gov A great tool for searching by

RecipientStateCFDA code

Generates HTML reports on screenGenerates downloadable ASCII files

Recipient Name Recipient City Name Recipient County Name Recipient Zip Code Congressional District Agency Code CFDA Program Number CFDA Program Title

Recipient name: PREVENT CHILD ABUSE-NEW JERSEYRecipient State: New JerseyFederal dollars: $716,751Get list of individual transactions for this recipient within this search

Top 10 Programs

Program (link shows description)

Federal Dollars

84.310: Parental Assistance Centers

$716,751

What’s Missing?A description of WHAT activities the recipient

is conducting!

The addition of activity codes can make this database remarkably useful for state and planning and coordination.

Multi-Disciplinary PlanningCase in point: Prevent Child Abuse – America

has 39 state chapters who develop state-level prevention plans. The potential exists to identify entities with similar mission funded through various federal sources.

An OpportunityThe continued development of this new

website presents an opportunity to further the existing NGP objective of establishing uniform object expense categories and definitions for grant budgeting and reporting by adding uniform activity codes to federal CFDA program classification.

For Background Information on NGP’s Uniform Guidelines InitiativeIn November 2004, the Uniform Guidelines

Coalition (co-sponsored by the NGP) released Uniform Data Elements and Definitions for Grant Budgeting and Financial Reporting, Version 1 (UDED) -- http://www.nasact.org/downloads/11_04-UDED_v1.pdf

Next Steps for this project:….Using “Prevention of Child Abuse Through Family Support

Services as an example of a multidisciplinary service area:

Develop a list of ‘activities’ relevant to the CFDA codes including: An activity code and name The related CFDA codes A definition for the activity

Using resources such as the Nonprofit Program Classification system of the Urban Institute/NCCS

Possible Next Steps continued….provide the NGP, Harvard and the Urban

Institute with a paper presenting the results

When finished, the NGP can consider sending the paper it to www.USASpending.gov and other stakeholders in improving data mining of federal awards.

For More InformationBill Levis, Urban Institute

Qrlevis@aol.com

Janet Rosenzweig, Harvard’s Kennedy SchoolJanet_Rosenzweig@ksg08.harvard.edu

Thank you!