SSA - RHYTTAC National Needs Assessment - 2025

Runaway and Homeless Youth Training, Technical Assistance, and Capacity Building Center (RHYTTAC) National Needs Assessment - 2025

Formative Data Collections for Program Support

0970 – 0531

Supporting Statement

Part A - Justification

May 2025

Submitted by:

Families and Youth Service Bureau

Administration for Children and Families

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

3rd Floor, Mary E. Switzer Building

330 C Street, SW

Washington, D.C. 20201

Project Officers:

Tyanna Williams

Sanzanna Dean

A1. Necessity for the Data Collection

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) seeks approval for the Runaway and Homeless Youth Training, Technical Assistance, and Capacity Building Center (RHYTTAC) National Needs Assessment.

Background

The Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB), Division of Runaway and Homeless Youth’s RHYTTAC is responsible for assisting organizations in developing and implementing effective approaches to serve young people experiencing homelessness or are at-risk of experiencing homelessness. To meet this responsibility, FYSB awarded a cooperative agreement, “…to provide technical assistance and training…” pursuant to authority in the Runaway and Homeless Youth (RHY) Act, codified at 34 USC §11221 and again at §11242.

RHYTTAC serves as the training and technical assistance (T/TA) provider tasked with capacity building support for programs, delivering timely and relevant T/TA, and developing tools and resources for grantees. To be effective, RHYTTAC needs to be aware of the changing needs and demands of grantees to serve youth, so that the tools, resources, and trainings developed meet their need. The most comprehensive and efficient way to identify the needs of the grantees across the country has been to administer a National Needs Assessment (NNA) that asks questions about trainings and topics that are most relevant to their programs and for those in which grant recipients are looking for T/TA. RHYTTAC’s NNA is administered to all FYSB Runaway and Homeless Youth (RHY) grant recipients annually to fulfill this need. Annual requests for feedback are necessary to account for evolving needs of grantees. This NNA has been conducted annually since 2021; each year we submit a similar assessment survey instrument for approval, with minor changes to reflect the current time and events that may impact grantees.

Legal or Administrative Requirements that Necessitate the Collection

Authority is given by 34 U.S. Code § 11277 which permits FYSB to evaluate the use of grant funds as intended for improving program operations for runaway and homeless youth. The ACF is undertaking the collection at the discretion of the agency.

A2. Purpose of Survey and Data Collection Procedures

Overview of Purpose and Approach

The NNA is intended to provide FYSB RHY grant recipients an opportunity to share with RHYTTAC and FYSB their T/TA needs. RHYTTAC and FYSB will use the results of the assessment to identify priorities for RHYTTAC T/TA for the following year, and to inform the agenda for the annual RHY National Training event. In addition to informing internal planning, the information will also be shared publicly with RHY grant recipients so that they may understand where their needs fit within the national context and, importantly, so they understand their input was received, noted, and will be used to guide future T/TA events. All FYSB RHY grantees will have the opportunity to provide feedback.

This proposed information collection meets the following goals of ACF’s generic clearance for formative data collections for program support (0970-0531):

• Delivery of targeted assistance and workflows related to program implementation.

• Planning for provision of programmatic or T/TA.

Process for Information Collection

This year’s survey will be administered through an online survey, which will be emailed to all FYSB RHY grantees. The 2025 NNA tool will ask each grantee organization about the following:

• Background information about their organization,

• The RHYTTAC resources used or events participated in during the past year,

• Preferences for translating RHYTTAC resources into other languages,

• Training needs for leadership and operations,

• Topical training needs, organized around FYSB’s four core outcome areas and some cross cutting topics.

• Needs for T/TA around outcomes measurement and system collaboration.

• Which assessments and screening tools, and evidence-based and evidence-informed practices, each organization utilizes, and their training needs around them.

• Training needs during public health and community emergencies.

A3. Improved Information Technology to Reduce Burden

RHY grant recipients will be asked to complete only one assessment per organization. To ensure the training needs are representative of the entire organization and not solely the individual completing the assessment, we have drafted messaging and offer support to guide organizations through this process. We will create a video that explains the assessment, its purpose and how results will be used, as well as how to effectively gather their organization’s responses with minimal burden. We provide a PDF of the survey to all grantees to discuss and/or share with colleagues to collect responses in advance of entering the data into the online survey if that facilitates their process.

Following the launch of the assessment, we will host an online “office hour” to review the instrument and suggested practices for completion and answer any questions that grantees may have as they prepare to complete the assessment. The survey instrument is programmed into REDCap, a secure web application for building and managing online surveys and databases. A single survey link is used to collect the survey data. Respondents may save their responses and return to complete the survey at a later time. Since there is one survey link that can be accessed by anyone, it may be shared with multiple individuals within an organization and inadvertently completed multiple times by one organization. During data cleaning, we identify cases where multiple responses are submitted by the same organization and then contact the grantee to determine which response should be retained.

A4. Efforts to Identify Duplication

We do not gather the information in this assessment in any other manner.

A5. Involvement of Small Organizations

All FYSB RHY grant recipients will be asked to complete the assessment, including those who qualify as a small business under the U.S. Small Business Association’s size standards for organizations in Child and Youth Services industry.¹ The assessment has been designed to impose minimal burden on grantees and is intended to improve services provided to grantees.

A6. Consequences of Less Frequent Data Collection

The NNA is an annual assessment that informs the development of responsive and relevant T/TA for the following year. By conducting the assessment annually instead of once a grant period, we can add and remove certain time sensitive sections and provide T/TA that is more responsive to organizations’ needs and their provision of service.

A7. Special Circumstances

There are no special circumstances for the proposed data collection efforts.

A8. Federal Register Notice and Consultation

Federal Register Notice and Comments

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (Pub. L. 104-13) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regulations at 5 CFR Part 1320 (60 FR 44978, August 29, 1995), ACF published a notice in the Federal Register announcing the agency’s intention to request an OMB review of the overarching generic clearance for formative information collection. This notice was published on November 3, 2020, (85 FR 69627), and provided a sixty-day period for public comment. During the notice and comment period, no substantive comments were received. A subsequent notice was published on December 28, 2020 (85 FR 84343) and provided a thirty-day period for public comment. During the notice and comment period, no substantive comments were received.

On January 28, 2022, ACF published a notice (87 FR 4603) providing a sixty-day period related to an extension request to this umbrella clearance. No comments were received. A second notice was published, allowing a thirty-day period for public comment, in conjunction with submission of the request to OMB. ACF did not receive any comments on the second notice.

Consultation with Experts Outside of the Study

We are not conducting consultation with experts outside the study.

A9. Incentives for Respondents

No tokens of appreciation for respondents are proposed for this information collection.

A10. Privacy of Respondents

Chapin Hall manages specific RHYTTAC activities, including conducting the NNA. As specified in the contract between Chapin Hall and Youth Collaboratory, Chapin Hall will protect respondent privacy to the extent permitted by law and will comply with all Federal and Departmental regulations for private information. Respondents will be informed of all planned uses of data, that their participation is voluntary, and that their information will be kept private to the extent permitted by law.

Further, Chapin Hall’s research data are stored on HITRUST Certified Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers. The servers are protected by a network firewall. Patches are regularly applied to and maintained on the servers. Access is limited to users with IRB approval and stated need. The principle of least privilege is followed—providing a user account only those privileges that are essential to perform its intended function. Security controls are regularly reviewed following NIST SP 800-53r4 guidelines to ensure that appropriate physical, administrative and technical controls are in place to guarantee confidentiality, integrity and availability of all data. Chapin Hall shall ensure that all of its employees who perform work under this contract/subcontract, are trained on data privacy issues and comply with the above requirements. All researchers involved in the data collection and analysis have complete Collaborative Institute Training Initiative (CITI) Human Subjects Research training.

As specified in the evaluator’s contract, Chapin Hall shall use Federal Information Processing Standard compliant encryption (Security Requirements for Cryptographic Module, as amended) to protect all instances of sensitive information during storage and transmission. Chapin Hall shall securely generate and manage encryption keys to prevent unauthorized decryption of information, in accordance with the Federal Processing Standard.  Chapin Hall shall: ensure that this standard is incorporated into their property management/control system; establish a procedure to account for all laptop computers, desktop computers, and other mobile devices and portable media that store or process sensitive information. Any data stored electronically will be secured in accordance with the most current National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) requirements and other applicable Federal and Departmental regulations.  No personally identifiable information will be collected through this data collection.

A11. Sensitive Questions

There are no sensitive questions contained in this data collection.

A12. Estimation of Information Collection Burden

Annual Burden Estimates

We will administer the needs assessment instrument once to all RHY grant recipients (~314). Based on prior experience with similar needs assessments for these grantees including the last four years administering the RHYTTAC NNA we estimate the time per response to be about 30 minutes and anticipate a 75% response rate.

Instrument	Total Number of Respondents	Total Number of Responses Per Respondent	Average Burden Hours Per Response	Total/Annual burden hours	Average Hourly Wage	Total Annual Cost
Needs Assessment Survey	235	1	0.5	117.5	$43.38	$5,097.15

Annual Cost Estimates

To calculate the annualized cost to respondents for the hour burden, we assume that the typical respondent will be a social and human service assistant. Based on data on our expected respondents from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we use a mean hourly wage of $21.69.² The wage rate was multiplied by 2 to account for fringe benefits and overhead for an average hourly wage of $43.38.

A13. Cost Burden to Respondents or Record Keepers

There are no additional costs to respondents.

A14. Estimate of Cost to the Federal Government

The total cost for the data collection activities under this current request will be $33,065. This includes direct and indirect costs of data collection.

A15. Change in Burden

This is for an individual information collection under the umbrella formative generic clearance for program support (0970-0531).

A16. Plan and Time Schedule for Information Collection, Tabulation and Publication

The following is the current 2025 plan and time schedule:

• Following OMB Approval: Launch survey and host online “office hour” to answer questions organizations may have about completing the survey

• 6 Weeks after Launching Survey: Close survey

• Spring and Summer 2025, after survey closes: Survey data analysis and report writing.

• September 2025: Finalize report and infographic and contractor to submit final materials to FYSB

• Once the infographic is approved, it is published on the RHTTACC website for grantees.

A17. Reasons Not to Display OMB Expiration Date

All instruments will display the expiration date for OMB approval.

A18. Exceptions to Certification for Paperwork Reduction Act Submissions

No exceptions are necessary for this information collection.

Attachments

1. Runaway and Homeless Youth Program 2025 National Needs Assessment

1 See https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/2019-08/SBA%20Table%20of%20Size%20Standards_Effective%20Aug%2019%2C%202019_Rev.pdf for table and guidelines.

2 The median annual wage for Social and Human Service Assistants occupation in 2024 was $45,120. This computes to an hourly wage of $21.69 Wage data from Social and Human Service Assistants : Occupational Outlook Handbook:U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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