2007 Maine Marks

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Why This is Important

Keeping Maine’s Children Connected is an integrated approach to help support children and youth who experience school disruption due to homelessness, foster care placement, in-patient psychiatric care, correctional facility placement and/or high mobility. The intent is to simplify the process of transition to and from educational programs so that these students can stay connected or can successfully reconnect to their educational programs as soon as possible.

KMCC has been working to create a statewide infrastructure that facilitates links to regional or local contacts to support all aspects of these youth’s lives. KMCC continues to maintain and build on the role of the liaison to facilitate connections with the best resource or person who can assist the youth and family. The KMCC liaison can play a valuable role by determining who is the best person or team within their school district, agency or facility to assist with the child or youth’s support plan.

Where We Stand

Liaisons are available in many state agencies, correctional institutions, psychiatric facilities and several school districts around the state. Systems have been established for communication between them and/or other key adults when a child is experiencing a school disruption. In future years it would be useful to know the proportion of school districts, psychiatric, corrections and homeless facilities, and state agencies with trained liaisons.

The above data, presented in promotion rates of disrupted students, were collected from five schools participating in a pilot site study of the KMCC project between January 2005 and July 2006. These data help to determine which co-occurring factors contribute to the success of students coping with disruptions. For instance, though the sample of students that took part in extracurricular activities was limited, 83% of students experiencing disruptions who took part in extracurricular activities were promoted to the next higher grade.

The relationship between a student having an Individualized Education Program (IEP) and whether s/he passed to the next grade was also assessed. The KMCC data sample indicates that 66% of students experiencing disruption are promoted to the next grade. Of those students in the KMCC data sample that have an IEP, 75% were promoted. These data stand in contrast to statewide promotion figures for all secondary public school students, who are promoted at the rate of 97%. Over time, we hope to see students experiencing disruptions promoted at similar rates as their peers.

Children whose educational programs are disrupted due to psychiatric hospitalization and corrections involvement, the two primary sources of educational disruption, require transition planning with the contribution of family members, school staff, mental health providers, and corrections officers.

Data Source and Context

Maine Children’s Cabinet, Annual Report Update, 2007. “Working Together for Maine Children and Families.”

Keeping Maine’s Children Connected (KMCC) Final Evaluation Report, July 31, 2006. Muskie School for Public Service, University of Southern Maine.

Evaluation data were gathered by KMCC liaisons at each of the five pilot sites participating in the 2005 – 2006 KMCC Evaluation study. They compiled data specifically designed to create a statistical portrait of each child that experienced a disruption during the project period from Fall 2005 through Spring 2006. Data were successfully collected regarding the activities of 57 students of the total 79 who experienced disruptions.

Point in time data were collected by staff at the Muskie School during the week of March 21-25, 2005 and during March 20-24, 2006 in order to depict the number of children in the care of psychiatric facilities, correctional facilities, DHHS placement and homeless facilities. Numbers for that point in time were available only for psychiatric and correctional facilities.