Sponsors (4)
Introduced April 17, 2025 by Ayanna Pressley · Last progress April 17, 2025
The bill expands targeted federal grants to deliver trauma‑informed, culturally responsive early‑childhood prevention and care coordination—building local capacity and evidence—while increasing federal costs and leaving important tradeoffs around who receives funding, administrative burdens, and how data are used and protected.
Children (especially ages 0–5 and up to 17 in high‑need census tracts) and their caregivers will gain funded access to coordinated, trauma‑informed, culturally responsive prevention and care‑coordination services.
Federal grants expand local capacity (hiring care coordinators/specialists, subawards to community orgs) and authorize telemedicine supports, strengthening community service infrastructure and workforce—especially in rural and underserved areas.
The programs fund training, community network building, and culturally responsive practice improvements to improve continuity across health, early childhood, and social services.
Taxpayers face increased federal spending across the programs (multiple grant and evaluation authorizations), roughly on the order of hundreds of millions over the authorization periods, increasing federal outlays without automatic offsets.
Program design limits (eligibility largely to State/local health departments, a capped number of grants and grant sizes) could leave many high‑need communities—including tribal lands, rural areas, and small nonprofits—without funding or appropriate leads.
Administrative and coordination burdens (Medicaid agreements, required provider participation) plus tight caps on allowable administrative and data‑analysis spending may strain state agencies and local grantees and hinder program implementation.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Creates HHS grant programs to fund data-driven, trauma-informed prevention and care coordination for children and caregivers, with authorized funding and tribal set‑asides.
Creates two HHS grant programs to identify neighborhoods with high rates of childhood adversity and fund community-based, trauma-informed prevention and care coordination services for children and their caregivers. One program (competitive awards to up to five entities) will use data analysis to map adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and related risk factors, design early-intervention strategies, and connect families to existing services. A second program authorizes grants (9–40 awards) for local governments and Indian Tribes to establish or expand gender‑responsive, culturally specific, trauma‑informed care coordination for children (especially ages 0–5) and caregivers, with specified uses, grant-size limits, tribal set‑asides, reporting, and an authorization of $15 million annually for five years.