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This document provides emergency guidance for both state CSBG lead agencies and eligible entities providing community support as part of a national effort to address the public health and economic impacts of the coronavirus disease, known as COVID-19.

Thank you for your partnership with the Office of Community Services (OCS) to ensure safe and continued services to the vulnerable children, families, and communities we serve. Here, you will find consolidated OCS program-specific COVID-19 resources and guidance that will help our grantees, partners, and stakeholders support individuals, families, communities impacted by COVID-19.

The purpose of this message is to provide you with an update on apportionment of Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) funding for Fiscal Year (FY) 2020. These awards represent the full allocation of funding for FY 2020.

The Office of Community Services (OCS) has received a number of questions from State Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) Lead Agencies and from CSBG eligible entities regarding state direction in the implementation of supplemental funds distributed under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, P.L. 116-36 (CARES Act).

To help address these questions, this letter discusses the role of states in (1) ensuring flexibility to meet urgent community needs, (2) creating procedures to amend plans and address new needs, (3) supporting locally identified services and strategies, (4) facilitating communication, performance management, and technical assistance, and (5) monitoring and accountability.

The attached Information Memorandum informs Indian Tribes and Tribal Organizations of the CSBG application requirements for FY2014 and provides a framework for the suggested format and “Outline for Model Tribe and Tribal Organization CSBG Application”.

Final FY 2000 Community Services Block Grant and Community Food and Nutrition Programs Allotments

Thank you for your continued engagement and partnership with us to address and mitigate the spread of COVID-19. We highly value our strong ongoing partnership, and hope to continue to be a resource to you as you implement community mitigation techniques. As you might imagine, a number of HHS divisions are releasing COVID-19-related information on funding and guidance. We thought it would be helpful to batch up information on key issues to keep you up-to-date.

Today, President Biden announced a six-pronged strategy to combat the variants of the COVID-19 pandemic. The plan includes a requirement that Head Start staff, across the country, take necessary steps to protect our youngest population by receiving their COVID-19 vaccination.

Draft recommendations for Federal performance measures were developed by the Urban Institute and the DSA after several meetings with the CSBG Performance Management Task Force, and feedback from the field.  The draft recommended performance measures reflect the primary responsibilities of DSA and include approximately 15 measures.  Eight of the performance measures have been identified as “critical key measures” and, therefore, to be implemented first.

OCS requests further input from the States to refine and identify priority measures for the States.  We request that the States provide feedback about what State measures should be designated as “critical key measures” to be implemented in the short-term.  Feedback should be provided to the Urban Institute at CSBG-Feedback@Urban.org.

On Friday, May 22, the second notice for public comment on the revised CSBG Model State Plan was published in the Federal Register, volume 80, number 99, page 29716 (https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/05/22/2015-12392/submission-for-omb-review-comment-request ).