ACL has awarded a nearly $1.2 million Elder Justice Innovation Grant (EJIG) to the RISE Collaborative, Inc. for the first year of a three-year project. The EJIG program supports the continued development of evidence-based practices on elder abuse intervention and response. The project seeks to further validate the RISE model as an evidenced-based intervention embedded in Adult Protective Services (APS) programs.

Each year, more than 53 million Americans provide a broad range of assistance to support the health, quality of life, and independence of an older adult or person with a disability. Another 2.1 million grandparents ¬— and an unknown number of other kinship caregivers — open their arms and homes each year to children who cannot remain with their parents. While each family is different, one characteristic they all share is the presence of a kin or grandparent caregiver who is providing support, love, and stability to vulnerable children—often outside the child welfare system.

The Elder Justice Coordinating Council (EJCC) was established by the 2010 Elder Justice Act to coordinate federal activities related to elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation across the federal government.

The purpose of the RERC program is to improve the effectiveness of services authorized under the Rehabilitation Act by conducting advanced engineering research on and development of innovative technologies that are designed to solve particular rehabilitation problems or to remove environmental barriers.

This week, HUD released new guidance for the Mainstream Vouchers program. Among other new flexibilities, the guidance creates new opportunities for ACL’s networks to partner with public housing agencies to better support people with disabilities in transitioning from institutional settings to homes in the community and to help people avoid moving to institutions in the first place.

This morning, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) shared the news that Alison Barkoff will leave ACL in early October. Alison will join George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health as the Harold and Jane Hirsh Associate Professor of Health Law and Policy and director of the Hirsh Health Law and Policy Program.

ACL has awarded $5 million to the Oasis Institute for a new grant that will further the development, expansion, and refinement of the Community Care Corps model. This project is designed to increase the number of community-based volunteer programs, thus decreasing the number of older adults, people with disabilities, and family caregivers who need assistance but cannot obtain help.

ACL has awarded a new cooperative agreement to the University of Southern California (USC) to operate ACL’s National Center on Elder Abuse (NCEA). USC will receive $1 million for the first year of this three-year project. With this funding, the NCEA will continue to serve as a national resource center dedicated to the prevention of elder maltreatment as captured in its mission statement: "National, state, and local partners in the field will be fully prepared to ensure that older Americans will live with dignity, integrity, independence, and without abuse, neglect, and exploitation."

ACL is pleased to announce the award of the 2024 Enhancing Statewide Falls Prevention Awareness, Strategy, and Collaboration funding opportunity to the National Council on Aging (NCOA). The intent of this initiative is to facilitate the development and enhancement of collaborative efforts of state falls prevention coalitions to reduce falls or the risk of falls, or both, among older adults and adults with disabilities, as well as their families and caregivers.

In this Policy Round-Up: