Federal Title V funds support staff on a wide array of maternal and child health (MCH) services. MCH Staff play a critical role in implementing the Title V work plan. For example, public health nurses care for pregnant and post-partum women as part of their standard of care and provide education around safe sleep, substance use disorders, breastfeeding and consult with families on cleft lip and or/ palate diagnoses. The Adolescent Health and Injury Prevention Program oversees unintentional injury, bullying prevention, youth inclusion and oversees the child and adolescent behavioral health initiative.

Title V supports programming through contracts for epidemiological services, perinatal outreach training, education and technical assistance for all MCH service providers and cleft lip and or/ palate clinics. Maintenance of Effort (MOE) funds include contracted services to provide community health nursing, school-based health centers, epidemiological services, birth defects medical record abstraction, bloodspot data collection and safe sleep programming.

Title V funds are an important component of Maine’s overall MCH efforts. Federal funds support 21 FTEs: the Title V Director (1.0 FTE), 2.5 CSHN Program FTEs, 1.5 MCH Program FTEs, 14 Public Health Nurses and one administrative position and 1 Adolescent Health and Injury Prevention Program FTE. MOE funds support 2.32 FTE district liaison positions in Maine’s nine public health districts who assist in connecting state level work to the district and local levels and 4 FTE public nurses.

These positions ensure that services necessary to fill gaps are available to the MCH population. For example, the Pediatric Mental Health Care Access manager works to increase access to mental health services for children and adolescents across the state. The Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems (ECCS) coordinator, although not funded through the MCH Block Grant, provides an infrastructure building role for several MCHBG priorities. For example, the ECCS grant is building pathways for families to access services in a more streamlined manner. Maternal health, developmental screening and perinatal systems of care are also being addressed.

MCH staff are a key component of the public health infrastructure foundation. Their expertise varies from program planning and implementation, providing clinical services to prenatal and post-partum women and infants, immunization and coordinating children with special health needs services. MCH staff also connect with other programs to ensure collaboration with staff working on similar projects. The MCH program works diligently to include the family perspective providing navigator services through the Maine CDC care coordinator and Maine Parent Federation to families in need of assistance.