Teaming in Rural Maine: Effective Services for Young Children and Their Families

Even under the best of circumstances, collaboration among education and service agencies is fraught with difficulties. Scarce resources and time as well as overworked personnel can short-circuit the best intentions. In too many cases, collaborative action on behalf of children remains an ideal, not a reality.

Rural Oxford County, Maine, faces numerous obstacles to smooth collaboration between the multiple agencies that serve children. The story of how agencies there are overcoming the barriers of rural isolation, poverty, and low adult verbal skills offers lessons to all service professionals.

Oxford County, Maine, covers 2,078 square miles in western Maine, one of the country's most rural states. The county has no major highways, no public transportation, and no taxi service. Two nonprofit transportation companies provide limited bus service to the elderly and low-income persons requiring medical services.

Oxford County agencies share the ideals held by most professionals who serve children. They have the vision to provide the needed education and social services to children and their families and they want their clients to achieve their full potential. While their goal is straightforward, many factors make it difficult to achieve in Maine and around the country. Although prevention is the least expensive and most efficient response, some agencies lack the resources for prevention.

The end result is that children and families may not receive wholistic services. One approach is for agencies to come together to plan a program that builds on each of their strengths. Such collaboration is the best avenue for achieving continuity of services. A team in Oxford County, Maine, has been working to facilitate continuity in their community.

Community Concepts, a multipurpose Community Action Program, includes many of the programs that serve Oxford County's poor children. Of the county's 53,797 population, 21 percent live in poverty. Thirty percent of children under five are poor, according to Maine Kids Count.

Community Concepts houses Head Start and began providing Early Head Start services in 1996. The Head Start/Early Head Start program is the only comprehensive child development program for low-income children in Oxford County. It serves 187 preschoolers in Head Start, and 95 infants/toddlers and pregnant women and their families in Early Head Start.

Many of the children served by Community Concepts are further hampered by disabilities. Nearly 160 children receive early intervention and FAPE (Free Appropriate Public Education) services in Oxford County. Most are three to five-year olds (70 percent); 30 percent are under age three. The children have mild to severe delays in one or more areas of development.

As of March 1999, Community Concepts' Early Head Start program had 11 children with disabilities aged birth to three and 28 children with disabilities aged three to five. Their diagnoses range from speech and language concerns to orthopedic disabilities. Head Start staff and child development professionals consider rural isolation and low adult verbal interaction as the principal reasons for the high rate of language deficiencies. According to the U.S. Department of Education, national statistics also report that the great majority of children birth to age five with disabilities are diagnosed with a speech or language delay.

In 1998, Community Concepts Early Head Start program accepted an opportunity to participate in a four-year training project sponsored by the Conrad Hilton Foundation and the Head Start Bureau. This project brings together teams of professionals and parents from Early Head Start programs to support collaborations between Head Start staff and Part C providers. (See related article on p. 30). All serve children with significant disabilities, work with families of children with disabilities, recruit children with disabilities, and employ commonly used intervention strategies.

In the first year of the project, Community Concepts staff facilitated the development of a team that included the Early Head Start Disabilities Manager, an Early Head Start Home Visitor, a former Head Start parent, the Part C (Child Development Services) provider, and a local pediatric nurse practitioner.

The group's first goal was to develop strong working relationships. The Hilton/Head Start project designed a yearly SpecialQuest conference to bring together teams to work on their goals and plan ways to achieve these goals. At each conference they plan
to revisit these goals, revise them as needed and plan additional goals.

The team's next goal was to complete a community "map" of services available to children under three and their families. In Oxford County, the mapping significantly impacted services provided in the community. It has led to more cooperative attitudes between service agencies. They are eager to refer clients to appropriate services because they know what is available.

To help families as they search for services and opportunities for their children with disabilities, the team has developed a brochure of available services in the South Paris region of Oxford County. Drawing on the community mapping activity, the brochure highlights medical and health services, and recreational opportunities. The team plans to meet regularly to update the brochure, develop a brochure for the rest of the county, and determine if there are other initiatives that would create opportunities for more collaboration.

This team is unique in its approach to working in a rural setting. The composition of the team represents a broad constituency of service providers who are committed to maintaining the collaboration process. When community agencies and services work together and make better use of their limited resources, children and families can gain access to more streamlined and readily accessible services. The experience of professionals in Oxford County, Maine, allows community partners around the country to raise their expectations for improved collaboration.

Mary Ann Demaree is a Training and Technical Assistance Specialist at the Region I Quality Improvement Center for Disabilities Services, T: 617-969-7100, E: mdemaree@edc.org.

See also:
     A Guide to Disability Rights Laws