Submission for Office of Management and Budget Review: Home Study and Post Release Services Provided to Unaccompanied Alien Children (0970-NEW)

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES <SUBAGY>Administration for Children and Families</SUBAGY> <SUBJECT>Submission for Office of Management and Budget Review: Home Study and Post Release Services Provided to Unaccompanied Alien Children (0970-NEW)</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Refugee Resettlement; Administration for Children and Families; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Request for public comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), Administration for Children and Families (ACF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, requests approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and invites public comments on the proposed information collection, including proposed changes. The request consists of several forms that will allow the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) Bureau to continue providing statutorily mandated and discretionary services to promote safe reunifications between sponsors and unaccompanied alien children (children/child) released from ORR care and custody. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Comments due</E> June 26, 2025. OMB is required to decide about the collection of information between 30 and 60 days after publication of this document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . Therefore, a comment is best assured of having its full effect if OMB receives it within 30 days of publication. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collection should be sent within 30 days of publication of this notice to <E T="03">www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain.</E> Find this information collection by selecting “Currently under 30-day Review—Open for Public Comments” or by using the search function. You can also obtain copies of the proposed collection of information by emailing <E T="03">infocollection@acf.hhs.gov.</E> Identify all emailed requests by the title of the information collection. <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <E T="03">Description:</E> ORR has undertaken a reorganization of its information collections to promote operational efficiency. The reorganization will result in more collections that contain fewer forms under a single OMB number. This request is to create a new information collection that contains forms associated with the provision of home study and post-release services (HS/PRS) to children and their sponsors. This information collection will contain a total of six revised forms transferred from three existing information collections. The forms and the information collections under which they are currently approved are as follows: • <E T="03">Administration and Oversight of the Unaccompanied Alien Children Program (OMB #0970-0547):</E> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">○ Notification of Concern (Form A-7)</FP> • <E T="03">Services Provided to Unaccompanied Alien Children (OMB #0970-0553):</E> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">○ Home Study Assessment (Form S-6)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">○ Post-Release Service Referral (Form S-19)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">○ Post-Release Services Report (Form S-22)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">○ Home Study Referral (Form S-26)</FP> • <E T="03">Release of Unaccompanied Alien Children from ORR Custody (OMB #0970-0552):</E> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">○ Virtual Check-in Questionnaire (Form R-6)</FP> These forms are completed by care provider case managers at care provider facilities to initiate the referral process for children and sponsors to receive HS/PRS and to document the outcome of safety and well-being follow-up calls to sponsors and released children; by PRS caseworkers to document the provision of PRS, to capture high-level milestones in the child's case after reunification; and to notify ORR of concerning situations that affect a child's safety and well-being, post-release; by home study caseworkers to document and assess the conditions present in the sponsor's home that may impact the released child's safety and wellbeing. These forms are documentary in nature and a critical component of the child's case file. In addition to grouping forms related to HS/PRS together in this information collection, ORR is proposing the following revisions: • <E T="03">Global Changes across all currently approved forms:</E> ○ Replace “Minor” with “Child”; replace “UC” or “Unaccompanied Child” with “UAC” or “Unaccompanied Alien Child” wherever they appear in conformance with terminology originating in the Homeland Security Act of 2002. ○ Replace “Gender” with “Sex”; “male” and “female” as the only menu options in conformance with Executive Order (E.O.) 14168 (Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government). ○ Remove sponsor categories “2A” and “2B”; Replace with “Category 2” to conform with updates to Unaccompanied Alien Children policy Field Guidance #26— <E T="03">Fingerprint Background Checks and Acceptable Supporting Documentation for a Family Reunification Application</E> which eliminates the past primary caregiver (“2A”) sponsor category distinction. ○ Change all fields that capture both date and time to only capture the date where time of completion is immaterial. ○ Add Physical Location of the Child field to the Unaccompanied Alien Children Basic Information section which populates across many forms in the Unaccompanied Alien Children Portal case management system. • <E T="03">Notification of Concern (Form A-7):</E> ○ Add fields to document gang affiliation including the sub-fields: Gang Affiliation: Child— • Child self-admission; • Suspected. Gang Affiliation: Sponsor— • Sponsor self-admission; • Suspected. ○ Adjust the burden estimate to account for a decrease in the number of children placed in ORR care, reflect that the form is completed by three different groups of respondents, and to reflect an increase in the overall number of fields the respondent will need to complete. The annual number of respondents increased from 60 HS/PRS providers to include 60 HS/PRS providers, 300 care provider case managers, and 78 ORR National Call Center (NCC) call specialists. The annual number of responses per respondent decreased from 75 responses per HS/PRS Caseworker to 41, with the average number of responses per care provider case manager increasing from 0 to 8 and the average number of responses per ORR NCC call specialist increasing from 0 to 31. The average burden hours per response increased from 0.25 hours to 0.33 hours to reflect the addition of new fields described above. • <E T="03">Home Study Assessment (Form S-6):</E> ORR currently has two approved version of this form-one in Word and one that was designed for the Unaccompanied Children Path system, which was never implemented. ORR proposes discontinuing the Word version and converting the Unaccompanied Children Path version into a PDF form with the following revisions: ○ Add the following fields to the “Sponsor Identifying Information” section. Phone Number; Relationship to Child; Marital Status. ○ Reword existing field labels and add the following fields to the “Case Information” section: Date Referred for Home Study; Current Care Provider Facility Name; Care Provider Staff Name; Care Provider Staff Phone; Care Provider Staff email; Supervisor Phone; Supervisor email; Caseworker Phone; Caseworker email; Subcontractor Phone; Subcontractor email. ○ Under the “Reason for Referral” section: Change the “Referral Type” field from open text to a dropdown with options for “TVPRA,” “Mandated,” and “Discretionary”. Change the “Reason for Referral” field from open text to a list of checkbox options that align with reasons a child's case would be referred for a home study per 45 CFR 410.1204. Add an open text field for “Additional Information Supporting Referral (if Necessary)”. Remove “Concerns to investigate during visit” field. ○ Under the “Household Members” section: Change the “Relationship to Sponsor” and “Relationship to Child” from open text to dropdown fields. Add the following fields with “Yes”/“No” dropdown: • Age; • Present during home study?; • Child Abuse/Neglect (CA/N) Check?; • Sex Offender Registry Check?; • Fingerprinted? Remove the following fields: • Current Household Member; • Record ID; • Related HS Assessment; • Entry ID. ○ Remove the following fields from the “Community Resources” section: HS Assessment; Entry. ○ Under the “Unaccompanied Alien Child Background” section: Expand a single question concerning a child's individualized needs impacting their daily function into six discreet questions pertaining to physical disabilities, developmental disabilities (including intellectual or cognitive disabilities), serious health conditions (including mental health conditions) which may be considered disabilities, current medication regimen, special dietary needs, and the routine use of medical equipment. Each new question includes “Yes/No” radio buttons and an open text field for further elaboration if applicable. Add “Does the child have an Individualized Section 504 Plan?” with instructions to summarize if yes, concerning the services or accommodations that will need to be maintained post-release. This question was added in response to comments received during the 60-day public comment period. Add a field to document the child's perceived benefits of being released to the sponsor in response to comments received during the 60-day public comment period. Change the type of response solicited by a question concerning the child's need for support due to criminal, substance use, and gang affiliation histories from “yes/no” radio buttons to checkboxes for each type of history, and add an open text field for further elaboration ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━