Project Assignment
Overview
The project for this course is the creation of a grant proposal.
The assessment for this course will be the construction of a grant proposal that targets a current area of developmental, behavioral, or diagnostic need for children or adolescents in your community. The project represents an authentic demonstration of competency, because it requires you to apply concepts from across the child and adolescent curriculum to compose an original grant proposal for a theoretically supported, age-specific, and effective intervention program. Terms commonly used in grant proposals include problem identification, prevalence, assessment of resources, impact of the problem, and implementation plan. The meaning of these grant terms is revealed in the critical elements listed in the prompt, in which you will be asked to devise a grant proposal that one would submit in the field of psychology. Grant proposals could be submitted for funding for research, training, institutional upgrades, nonprofit center grants, funding opportunities, grants for children's programs, or grants for specific outreach programs such as engaging underrepresented cultures. The purpose of this task is to assess your understanding of concepts from across the child and adolescent curriculum.
Some real-world examples of grant proposal ideas have included:
• School/Educational Setting
Orchard Middle School has over 50 at-risk students with a reading performance that directly affects their overall self-esteem and negative behavior issues. The school submitted a grant proposal to support development of a program to help all students with poor reading skills learn to read at grade level and increase their reading speed, comprehension, and reading attention span and overall sense of worth, esteem, and achievement. Studies have shown those who do better in school, fare better with stable mental health.
• Outpatient Mental Health
The Open Arms Family Center requested a grant in the amount of $250,000 to contribute to the start-up funds for a family homeless shelter and mental health services. As an innovative, all-inclusive shelter program, the center aimed to provide for 10 families with children under the age of five who are experiencing homelessness. The center is committed to its mission of decreasing the overall number of homeless families in the Metro Boston area as well as working to break the cycle of homelessness.
• Community Outreach
The purpose of Healthy Tomorrows is to stimulate innovative community-based programs that employ prevention strategies to promote access to health care for children and their families nationwide. HTPCP funding supports direct-service projects, not research projects. Healthy Tomorrows is designed to support family-centered initiatives that implement innovative approaches for focusing resources to promote community; define preventive child health and developmental objectives for vulnerable children and their families, especially those with limited access to quality health services; foster cooperation among community organizations, agencies, and families; involve pediatricians and other pediatric, child, and adolescent mental health professionals; build community and statewide partnerships among professionals in health, education, social services, government, and business to achieve self-sustaining programs to ensure healthy children and families. Healthy Tomorrows requested a grant proposal for $10,000 to conduct a needs analysis for a meal delivery program to serve its less mobile community members.
The project is divided into three milestones, which will be submitted at various points throughout the course to scaffold learning and ensure quality submissions. These milestones will be submitted in Modules Three, Five, and Seven. The submission will occur in Module Nine.
In this assignment, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following course outcomes:
• Assess contemporary theories of development for their strengths and weaknesses in addressing current developmental, behavioral, and diagnostic issues for children and adolescents
• Critique the major criteria used to classify children and adolescents with specific disorders established by the American Psychiatric Association
• Evaluate the influence of individual, familial, environmental, cultural, and political factors for their current impact on the diagnostic process for children and adolescents
• Evaluate child and adolescent development resources and support services in terms of accessibility, organization, funding, and overall effectiveness
• Assess the ethical implications of research and program development in the field of child and adolescent psychology
• Analyze the effectiveness of theoretically-supported intervention strategies to address current developmental, behavioral, and diagnostic needs of children and adolescents
The grant proposal will contain the critical elements listed below.
Prompt
I. Problem Identification: Research and identify resources for a specific developmental, behavioral, or diagnostic need for children or adolescents in your community (3-4 pages):
a. Prevalence: Determine a necessary program or service by examining current needs for children or adolescents in your community, using the standards established by the American Psychiatric Association.
i. What is the issue you have chosen to address? Who is affected? What data do you have that points to the prevalence of this issue?
ii. What is the necessary service or program? How will it address the needs you have examined?
b. Assessment of Resources: Evaluate available and needed resources in your community.
i. Evaluate the resources available for providing a program or service such as the one you have identified.
ii. Determine necessary resources that are not available and explain their importance in providing the identified program or service.
c. Impact of Problem: Describe the impact of the problem on individuals, families, and the community. Construct an impact statement based on the prevalence of the identified issue and the lack of community resources.
i. Articulate how the lack of the identified program or service has an impact on the community.
ii. How is the lack of available resources exacerbating the issue?
II. Literature Review: Conduct a review of available literature around developmental theory in regard to your identified issue (3-4 pages):
a. Problem/Need: Using American Psychiatric Association criteria and current professional research publications, how is the identified developmental, behavioral, or diagnostic problem identified/diagnosed in children and adolescents?
b. Theory Survey and Comparison: Survey current developmental theories.
i. Identify the factors that contribute to the prevalence of the problem according to these theories.
ii. How do these different theories compare? What are their contrasting opinions in regard to prevalence and diagnosis of your identified problem?
III. Intervention Strategy: Research and justify the selection of a theoretically supported and effective intervention strategy for addressing the target issue (2-3 pages):
a. Efficacy: Analyze and critique at least two established intervention strategies for inconsistencies and effectiveness.
i. Critically examine intervention strategies for consistency with current developmental theories.
ii. How effective were these strategies in addressing their respective issues? To what extent would these intervention strategies address the issue identified in your community?
b. Selection: Select an intervention strategy and justify your selection based on its effectiveness and the individual, familial, environmental, cultural, and political factors. Your strategy should be appropriate for your age-specific population.
c. Ethics: Analyze the selected intervention strategy for possible ethical and legal challenges. Consider provider as well as client concerns.
IV. Implementation Plan: Construct a plan for implementation of the selected intervention strategy in your community (4-5 pages):
a. Narrative: Compose a narrative to describe the setting, personnel, target population, length of time for service, and capacity of the proposed program.
b. Training: Formulate a strategy for the training of personnel according to the selected intervention strategy.
c. Assessment: Recommend an assessment plan to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention strategy.
d. Ethics: Assess the ethical and legal implications for implementing the intervention strategy in your community.
V. Closing Statement: Summarize your grant proposal/recommendation with careful attention to the audience you must convince.
Milestones
Milestone One: Problem Identification Draft
In Module Three, you will create a draft of the Problem Identification section of your grant proposal. In this assignment, you will think about the professional environment you will be seeking upon graduation and a potential problem within that professional environment that could be solved through your recommended program, research, or initiative.
Milestone Two: Literature Review Draft
In Module Five, you will submit a draft of the Literature Review section of your grant proposal. Your draft will contain a narrative in which you will use professional journals, texts, and resources to provide a comprehensive examination of the identified problem from the perspective of current developmental theories. Providing examples relevant or similar to your organizational environment is imperative for those reviewing the grant to truly gain an experiential perspective of the grant.
Milestone Three: Intervention Strategy and Implementation Plan Draft
In Module Seven, you will submit a draft of the Intervention Strategy and Implementation Plan section for your grant proposal.
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
1. The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
2. The response also include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
3. Also Include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.