Maine receives grants to help children

Maine receives grants to help children
(February 2009 Issue)

By Pamela Berard

Maine has received federal grants for programs that help wellness efforts for children and families.

Project Launch

Maine received one of six Project LAUNCH (Linking Actions for Unmet Needs in Children's Health) grants from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The state will receive $916,000 annually for five years to expand prevention programs for underserved communities through the Community Caring Collaborative (CCC), which addresses early maternal and child health interventions, substance abuse and mental health issues and primary care.

R.I. will also receive $916,000 annually for its R.I. Successful Start Initiative, which aims to build the social-behavioral capacities of young children and will expand mental health consultation in child care settings.

Project LAUNCH promotes wellness in children from birth to age eight, by addressing total wellness: physical emotional, social and behavioral. "We see wellness as being kind of holistic," says David DeVoursney, program analyst with SAMHSA. "We don't want to see mental health separate from physical health."

Jennifer A. Oppenheim, Psy.D, SAMHSA public health analyst and Project LAUNCH coordinator, says the LAUNCH grants are about building bridges, helping integrate services and funding streams and sustaining wellness and prevention programs for youngsters.

DeVoursney says communities can better serve children by addressing behavioral health in primary care settings.

Oppenheimer says LAUNCH supports programs like CCC that bring services to people where they live, advocates training across disciplines to support healthy child development and integrates primary care, mental health, social services and family support.

CCC, a grassroots coalition of 33 agencies and tribal entities, serves high-risk children ages 0 through 8 and their families in rural Washington County, a north-east coastal community that includes two Passamaquoddy tribes with 2,000 tribal members and has the highest child poverty rate (28.4 percent) in Maine.

CCC Director Marjorie Withers says Washington County's residents are self-sufficient and experiencing challenges common in rural communities and today's economy. The area's (as large as R.I. and Conn. combined geographically) population is less than 32,000. Residents travel long distances for services, and because many jobs are seasonal (the region is a major supplier of blueberries, Christmas trees and shellfish), poverty is a major issue: the county is among the top 10 impoverished counties on the entire Eastern seaboard.

The county has seen an influx of addiction to opiates and prescription drugs, a high alcoholism rate and the highest rate in Maine of children being dropped from child care centers or preschool programs. It was recognized as one of the only places in the country where a woman's life expectancy is decreasing.

"We have some pretty substantial concerns that are related to poverty," Withers says. One out of three babies is born in "at risk" conditions including parents who use substances, teen moms or families with a history of trauma.

Withers, former director of human services for the Passamaquoddy tribe, has a master's in counseling psychology, and says the CCC was designed to bring up the abilities of agencies to meet children's needs. "We realized that if we were going to make a difference we were going to take programming to people and make this a public health issue, rather than a mental health issue."

Early invention and prevention is needed at pregnancy or age 0, she says, with professionals embedded in the community to make them more accessible to parents.

CCC will utilize existing agencies and evidence-based practices. Among initiatives, family specialists will be embedded in rural and reservation health centers and a methadone center.

CCC trained 25 therapists in the DC: 03R curriculum (a system for diagnosing mental health and development disorders in young children) so that families can get assessments done locally. They are developing an Infant and Family Support Specialist Curriculum, allowing those with that credential to gain access to Maine-Care reimbursement.

CCC supports training for advisors to do mental health consultations in classrooms and child care centers. Consultants will help children learn relaxation techniques and recognize signs of stress. The agency is also developing support groups, training for a parent mentoring program and the sharing of case plans across agencies utilizing wraparound facilitators.

New Family Initiative

Maine also is one of 10 states awarded a federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau grant. The nearly $265,000 will benefit the Maine New Family Initiative, a public-private partnership that aims to improve awareness of and access to resources for new parents and families that will incorporate "real" voices in messaging and social marketing efforts.

Sheryl Peavey, director of the Early Childhood Initiative and project contact for the Maine New Family Initiative, says the program is looking at ways of engaging parents in understanding and connecting to available resources.

With a media partner, they'll try to reach diverse populations by "using that population as a voice to carry the message� Rather than having people you don't relate to telling you on the radio or in pictures that you should or shouldn't do something as a parent, we thought it would be much more powerful using people you know to carry the message."

A campaign will be built based on how young parents talk to one another and where they get their information such, as YouTube.

The Maine New Family Initiative campaign will work in tandem with programs like Project LAUNCH. Families will be included in the work as members of leadership teams and advisory councils.