Strengthening Working Families Initiative Supplemental Supporting Statement

Funding Opportunity Announcement

H-1B Strengthening Working Families Initiative Grants

Supplemental Justification

Supplemental Supporting Statement A: Justification

This request seeks OMB approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act for the unique information collection requirements in the Strengthening Working Families Initiative Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). The Employment and Training Administration (ETA), U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), announces the availability of approximately $25,000,000 in grant funds authorized by Section 414(c) of the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998 (ACWIA), as amended (codified at 29 USC 3224a) to address education and training barriers for low- to middle-skilled parents by prioritizing the needs of this targeted population; addressing child care needs for parents seeking education and training; increasing access to child care resources; and bridging the gap between the workforce development and child care systems. To help meet these objectives, the Department is interested in supporting evidence-based strategies or innovations based on these models that remove a range of barriers to training, including child care and other needs that working families face, by investing in education and skills training in combination with customized supportive services. Program strategies must include:

• Moving lower- to middle-skilled individuals into middle- to high-skilled jobs; and

• Supporting parents who face a barrier to training, including child care and other supportive service needs.

An overarching goal of the Strengthening Working Families Initiative is to assist in the removal of child care barriers faced by working families in need of training to secure better jobs. To support this, the Department is interested in funding projects that will simultaneously address both the individual job training needs and child care barriers of workers while also developing or improving systems navigation services that will result in sustainable systemic changes for the applicant’s community or region. This combined approach will make it easier for working families to access child care resources.

We expect to award individual grant amounts ranging from approximately $250,000 to $4 million each. The period of performance is 48 months. To accommodate a range of applicants and models, including rural single or consortium applicants, there is no designated minimum amount for which communities may apply.

Applications will include the following information collections: 1) Form SF-424 “Application for Federal Assistance,” separately cleared under OMB control number 4040-0004, 2) Project Budget, 3) Project Narrative, and 4) Attachments to the Project Narrative.

Electronic availability:

This grant solicitation is available on the grants.gov Web site. Based on past DOL experience, the Department anticipates 75 percent of responses will be submitted electronically.

Small Entities:

This information collection will not have a significant impact on a substantial number of small entities.

Assurances of confidentiality:

These grant solicitations do not offer applicants assurances of confidentiality.

Special circumstances:

This FOA implicates no special circumstances.

Burden:

Based on past experience, the DOL expects to receive approximately 60 applications from an equal number of respondents.  The ETA estimates public reporting burden for the information collection to average 20 hours per response for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining needed data, and completing and reviewing the collection of information.

60 applications x 20 hours = 1200 hours.

The DOL has increased the October 2014, average hourly earnings in the professional and business services industry of $29.29 per hour by 40 percent (total $41.01 per hour) to monetize this burden.  See The Employment Situation—October 2014, DOL, Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_11072014.pdf at page 32.

1200 hours x $41.01 = $49,212.00

The DOL associates no other burden costs with this information collection. In addition to the application, each grantee will be required to submit quarterly financial, performance, and narrative reports to the ETA. Those information collection requirements will be cleared under a separate control number.

Total burden: 60 respondents, 60 responses, 1200 hours, $0 other cost burden.

Supplemental Supporting Statement B: Statistical Methods

This information collection does not employ statistical methods.

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