State Letter #12-11

TO: STATE REFUGEE COORDINATORS

FROM: Eskinder Negash, Director
Office of Refugee Resettlement

SUBJECT: Social Services Formula Allocations

Attached is a Federal Register Notice, published on Thursday, August 30, 2012, that announces the FY 2012 Social Services awards.  As described in ORR State Letter #12-10 and in the Federal Register Notice published on Thursday, August 23, 2012, ORR will be providing notice of formula grant awards through Notices published in the Federal Register.  Final formula allocations will no longer be available under the Funding Opportunity section of the website.

The attached table shows the FY 2012 Social Services allocations and the population figures used to determine the allocations.  The population figures are based on FY 2010 and FY 2011 arrivals data (October 1, 2009, through September 30, 2011) in the ORR Refugee Arrivals Data System (RADS) and data for the same time period that States submitted to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and that ORR matched against the data in RADS.
      
A State's formula allocation is calculated as follows:

1. The total amount of funds available for this purpose divided by:
2. The total number of refugees, Cuban and Haitian entrants (including Cuban Medical Professional Parolees and Havana Parolees), asylees, certain Amerasians from Vietnam, victims of severe forms of trafficking, and Iraqi and Afghan Special Immigrants, as shown by the ORR Refugee Arrivals Data System for FY 2010 and FY 2011.  The resulting per capita amount is multiplied by:
3. The number of persons in item 2, above, in the State as of September 30, 2011, adjusted for verified secondary migration.

Floor allocations for States with low numbers of arrivals are also determined by the allocation formula as follows:

If the application of the regular allocation formula yields less than $100,000, then –

1. a base [floor] amount of $75,000 is provided for any State with a population of 50 or fewer refugees who have been in the U.S. two years or less; and
2. for a State with more than 50 refugees who have been in the U.S. two years or less:  (a) a floor has been calculated consisting of $50,000 plus the regular per capita allocation for refugees above 50 up to a total of $100,000 (in other words, the maximum under the floor formula is $100,000); (b) if this calculation has yielded less than $75,000, a base amount of $75,000 is provided for the State.

The formula allocation floors for States with small numbers of arrivals provide funding for the minimal structure for a State to provide employment and other social services necessary for successful resettlement in American communities.

In accordance with 45 C.F.R. 400.147, States are required to provide social services to refugees in the following order of priority, except in certain individual extreme circumstances:  (a) all newly arriving refugees during their first year in the U.S. who apply for services; (b) refugees who are receiving cash assistance; (c) unemployed refugees who are not receiving cash assistance; and (d) employed refugees in need of services to retain employment or to attain economic independence.  States should, to the extent possible, ensure that all newly arriving refugees receive refugee-specific services designed to address the employment barriers that refugees typically face.

Reporting

States are required to submit (1) the ORR-6 Performance Reports on a trimester basis and (2) Standard Form (SF) 425 Federal Financial Report on a quarterly basis. 

Performance Reports are submitted using Schedule A and Schedule C of the ORR-6 (OMB Clearance Number 0970-0036, expiration date March 31, 2013, 3.875 estimated burden hours per response).  The ORR-6 Performance Reports are submitted to the Office of Refugee Resettlement.  The ORR-6 Performance Report may be found at: https://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/orr/resource/report-forms.   

The Federal Financial Report should be submitted both to ACF’s Office of Grants Management and to ORR.  The SF-425 Federal Financial Report may be found at: https://www.acf.hhs.gov/grants-forms. 

Grantees also have the option of submitting the SF-425 Federal Financial Report through ACF’s on-line data collection (OLDC) system.  

If you have any questions about the Social Services allocations, please contact Henley Portner at (202) 401-5363 or Henley.Portner@acf.hhs.gov.

FY 2012 SOCIAL SERVICES ALLOCATIONS

Federal Register Notice

(DOC 25KB, PDF 76KB)