The Community Health Center, with offices in New London and Groton, and United Community and Family Service in Norwich were among federally qualified health centers around the state chosen to receive federal grants to help identify and enroll children eligible for government health insurance programs.

The Community Health Center, based in Middletown with 12 sites statewide, will receive a $400,584 grant to help children access Medicaid and the state's HUSKY program through an electronic enrollment and screening tool, the center said recently in a news release.

The center said it expects to be able to add 16,000 more children to insurance rolls throughout the grant.

"This grant substantiates Connecticut's urgent need for an innovative outreach strategy to ensure that families in Connecticut who are eligible for insurance receive it and keep it," said Mark Masselli, president and chief executive officer of the Community Health Center. "Too many children are without health insurance, either because they were never enrolled or weren't retained in the program. This work can change that."

UCFS is among another 12 health centers statewide that will share a $988,177 federal grant to help identify and enroll children in either Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP.

The 12 centers are managed by Community Health Center Association of Connecticut, which will use the funds to implement a systematic and regionalized approach for training, outreach, assessment and other types of work involved in enrolling and retaining children with government health insurance.

Outreach workers for the centers will work in the community during off-hours, including nights and weekends, to connect with hard-to-reach populations, increase the number of successful applications and retain enrollees.

"The funds will help Connecticut's health centers deliver much needed services to the state's un-insured," said Michael Sherman, chief executive officer of the association.

"With millions of Americans either out of work or otherwise struggling to make ends meet during this recession, there is an even greater urgency to bring steady, reliable health care to children in these families who may have lost their coverage," Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in announcing the grants.