OUR PREVENTION REACH

Maine Children's Trust works to prevent child abuse before it occurs through:

• Partnering with local organizations, we achieve more. The Trust partners with dozens of local organizations to deliver proven prevention program and strategies while supporting the organizations with resources and child abuse prevention expertise.
• Leading child abuse prevention training in Maine, the Trust support programs that train thousands of family-serving professionals. Their efforts have also resulted in training thousands of educators, child care providers, and medical professionals in infant safe sleep, abusive head trauma prevention, protective factors and mandated reporting last year.
• Supporting parenting communities, we provide parenting education that builds Protective Factors in families. Through the Prevention Councils each year, thousands of caregivers participated in parenting education classes and Circle of Parents, a peer support model. These programs helped thousands of mothers, fathers, grandparents, and foster/adoptive caregivers. Additionally, over a thousand caregivers and children participate annually in playgroups, which provided opportunities for socialization and positive parent-child interactions through play.
• Focusing on one of our most vulnerable populations, we have targeted efforts to reach our youngest children. Through our networks and partnerships, the Trust acts as the backbone organization to improve social outcomes for young children in several ways.
• Providing infant safe sleep education and a portable crib, our Cribs for Kids initiative has served families who might otherwise have to put their infant in an unsafe sleep situation. The Trust serves as an affiliate for the Cribs for Kids program and utilizing our statewide network of prevention partners we have reached over a thousand families in need annually.
• Unifying local, state and regional organizations, the Trust convenes a statewide Infant Safe Sleep & Abusive Head Trauma Prevention Coalition to share data, best practices, resources and expertise to reduce unsafe sleep and shaken baby related death and injury to infants under one. Representatives from numerous hospitals, the medical examiner office, physicians, state government agencies, law enforcement, the American Academy of Pediatrics and local agencies gather to develop strategies for and provide consistent messaging around safe sleep practices.
• Guiding the work of Maine Families, which has shown positive outcomes in child health, safety and development, as well as overall family well-being. Maine Families reaches thousands of families with children through home visits each year. Overall, a large percentage of participating families reported they always placed their babies on their backs, without bed-sharing or soft bedding. In addition, a large percentage of participating mothers received a postpartum care visit with a healthcare provider within 8 weeks of birth as well as a large number of children 19-35 months had up to date immunizations, typically higher than the state average. Of all children visited, a majority have identified Primary Care Provider, higher than the state average. Finally, a majority of participating children were up to date with the most recent well-child check-up.