Title VI of the Older Americans Act provides grants to organizations (i.e., Title VI grantees) to support American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians in the areas of nutrition, supportive services for older adults, and caregiver services. The nutrition and supportive services grants include congregate and home-delivered meals, information and referral, transportation, personal care, chores, health promotion and disease prevention, and other supportive services. The caregiver services grants include assisting families in caring for older relatives with chronic illness or disability, and grandparents caring for grandchildren.
Under an initial contract with the Administration for Community Living (ACL), New Editions developed a Title VI Tracking Workbook. This workbook helps grantees track the services they provide to tribal elders and caregivers, and it automatically calculates performance metrics needed for annual reporting to ACL. New Editions created the requirements for the workbook, built it, and tested it for quality assurance. We also piloted the workbook with a group of grantees and made improvements based on their feedback.
Through a follow-on subcontract with Teya, New Editions offers technical assistance and weekly trainings to grantees on how to use the workbook and other related topics such as ensuring data quality and blending and braiding funding effectively. Additionally, New Editions gathers information from grantees about their programs successes and challenges. We then compile this information and share it with ACL to help improve policies and processes related to Title VI, ultimately supporting grantees and tribal communities more effectively.