With assistance from partners like Coastal Kids Preschool in Damariscotta and Help Me Grow Maine, a local group is seeking to support Nobleboro families preparing their children to enter kindergarten healthy, thriving, and ready to learn.
Since 2023, the MidCoast Community Collaborative has worked to raise awareness about the impact lack of staffing, funding, and resources has on providers supporting children from birth to adulthood in the region. The collaborative is a network of organizations, businesses, and community members focused on supporting growth and development of children and families in Knox and Lincoln County.
Now, the collaborative is seeking to support Nobleboro residents while taking steps to build what Jessica Berry calls a “community of prevention.”
Berry is the assistant superintendent and special education coordinator at the St. George Municipal School Unit and a founding member of the MidCoast Community Collaborative.
“The whole prevention system is short staffed, underfunded, and their catchment area is huge, so a lot of kids who need it are not getting what they need,” she said.
In partnership with Coastal Kids Preschool and Nobleboro Central School, a mobile team of specialists with the MidCoast Community Collaborative will engage with children ages 0-4 and their families. This team includes a nurse practitioner, social worker, early childhood interventionist, speech pathologist, and occupational therapist.
The team will deliver support and services to children and their families through public community events, support groups, and in-home services on an as needed basis, said Berry.
Equipped with intervention training from Help Me Grow Maine, a network of community resources from the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, staff with the MidCoast Community Collaborative and Coastal Kids Preschool perform developmental screenings on participating children, working together to figure out the needs of individual families.
Berry said the goal is for every child to have regular developmental screenings and prevention support through Zero to School Starting CountyStrong, a MidCoast Community Collaborative initiative that is receiving $450,000 in grant funding from the John T. Gorman Foundation over the course of two years to provide resources to local families.
The foundation is a private organization with a mission to make Maine a more equitable place where all children and families can thrive, according to its website.
The grant was awarded to the collaborative in July 2024, said Berry.
Coastal Kids Preschool Executive Director Jenn Caron said Zero to School Starting Strong has helped with the “drop” in availability of therapy services for local children. Through the initiative, the collaborative team provides services to students, as well as early childhood intervention training to preschool staff.
“Some of our kids are doing telespeech or teleoccupational therapy and physical therapy, and that’s definitely not ideal when you’re under 5,” said Caron. “Zero to School is allowing us to get a little of that back into our school. By partnering with them, we’re getting a speech therapist back in the school for three hours a week.”
Based on the results of the developmental screenings, the MidCoast Community Collaborative team will meet with families to identify trends and individual needs, providing resources to “move kids along to their next developmental milestones.”
“Then, we’re going to rescreen and see if we start to move the needle a little bit,” said Berry. “Instead of referring them or not addressing it, we’re building a system of prevention.”
The idea for Zero to School Starting Strong stemmed from data collected by state officials on mental health outcomes in Lincoln and Knox counties, which showed that youth are struggling, leading to a rise in need for special services.
Berry said she and her team were determined to figure out how they could help bridge the gap in providing early childhood intervention resources and support to the Midcoast area.
“Me and several other people started looking at the systems supporting early childhood families and children, specifically before they come into school, because there’s all this science showing that 0-3 (years old) is when brains are building and it’s the most important time for that,” she said.
Because Midcoast Maine is such a rural area, Berry said the collaborative found that the only family’s receiving resources for early childhood intervention were closely located to Community Action Program agencies – local nonprofits that provide resources to low-income people – YMCAs, and local schools that have the bandwidth to provide support.
Nobleboro is the second school to partner with the MidCoast Community Collaborative to implement Zero to School Starting Strong. The initiative was piloted at St. George School last summer, said Berry.
“St. George has a 53% socioeconomic status for our school; free and reduced lunch, 53%; and 44% of our pre-K and kindergarten kids meet that threshold; that’s a lot,” Berry said. “About 50% of our classrooms have (individualized education programs) for early childhood. It’s the same in other schools.”
Nobleboro Central School Principal Adam Bullard said he contacted Berry in hopes to find a way to support and provide resources to families with young children in town.
“This is something I’ve been thinking about for awhile … We just know that in order to build really strong community, it’s all about building trust, building connections, meeting people where they’re at, meeting them early,” he said. “The dream is to have an organization that we’re partnering with that can help people right away, as soon as they’re home with their newborn until they get to us here.”
Berry said another goal the collaborative hopes to achieve through this initiative is bringing together adults and families who are feeling detached from their community, so that they can support and rely on each other.
“What we have found so far is that no matter how small the town is, people don’t know each other,” Berry said. “Parents are disconnected, are isolated, are feeling under supported, under resourced, don’t know how to help their children, and they don’t have childcare because it’s too expensive or there’s not enough of it, and so everyone’s really alone right now.”
Berry said she hopes Zero to School Starting Strong can become a “blueprint” for early childhood intervention and family support.
The MidCoast Community Collaborative will identify every family in Nobleboro with a child age 0-4 with help from the town and Nobleboro Central School. Then, the collaborative will send out postcards to those families and drop off flyers at local businesses, both containing information regarding how to get involved in Zero to School Starting Strong.
Berry said families can call Nobleboro Central School and Coastal Kids Preschool, who will maintain lists of interested parties and will have information about how to get involved with the initiative.
For more information, call Nobleboro Central School at 563-3437, call Coastal Kids Preschool at 563-5335, email info@coastalkidsme.org, or email Berry at j.berry@stgeorgemsu.org.
