Request for Proposals:  Home Visit Pilot Project

Request for Proposals:
Opioid Settlement for Prevention and Responsive Engagement of Youth
The Cumberland County Opioid Settlement Committee is now accepting applications for grant funding
from the opioid settlement funds received by Cumberland County.
RFP Release Date: Friday August 21, 2026
Proposals Due back by: 4:00PM, Friday October 9, 2026
Notification of Award:
Submit to: Bridget O'Connor, boconnor@cumberlandcounty.org
Contact Information:
Bridget O'Connor, MPPM, PS-C, Chronic Disease Prevention Program Manager
Cumberland County Government
27 Northport Dr
Portland, ME 04103
Phone: (207) 749-5633
Email: boconnor@cumberlandcounty.org

RFP: Cumberland County MIYHS Data Analysis RFP
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Overview:
Cumberland County Government is seeking proposals for implementation of early intervention
Supportive Home Visitation services to support student readiness and engagement in school. Selected
services include refining mechanisms for identifying students who are impacted by opioid use or at
greater risk of substance use behaviors; and designing and implementing preventative home visits.
Aim of RFP: The primary aim of the funding in this RFP is to increase the presence of protective factors
and decrease the risks for behavioral health problems among middle school students most impacted by
the opioid problem.
Cumberland County Public Health: Cumberland County Public Health (CCPH) was founded in 2021 to
complement the existing public health entities and efforts underway within the County and the State.
The mission of the department is to bring people, organizations, and communities together to promote
wellbeing and protect the health of people and the communities where they live, learn, work and play.
CCPHD envisions a Cumberland County where communities are thriving; residents, organizations, and
local governments connect and invest in collaborative actions; and every person has an equitable
opportunity to live a healthy life.
Opioid Settlement Funds: The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health created Guiding
Principles for the Use of Funds From the Opioid Litigation that the state of Maine and many other states
are using to guide allocation of the money. Those principles include:
1. Spend money to save lives
2. Use evidence to guide spending
3. Invest in youth prevention
4. Focus on Racial Equity
5. Develop a fair and transparent process for deciding where to spend the funding
While most people can agree it's best to prevent a problem before it arises, not all efforts in the name of
prevention have the intended outcomes. The most impactful prevention efforts are grounded in the
science of prevention and are community driven. They target the root causes of the problem, change the
policies, systems, and environments that affect daily life, and/or improve the conditions that shape
health. Most importantly, they are designed to make lasting change.
A primary prevention gap identified in Cumberland County Public Health's 2023-2027 Assessment and
Action Plan for the Opioid Settlement Fund is "a scarcity of multi-tiered behavioral health and case
management services for socially & emotional vulnerable children and families, impacting whether and
how children arrive at school."

RFP: Cumberland County MIYHS Data Analysis RFP
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Informed by a two-year assessment, including expert interviews, community engagement and literature
reviews, Cumberland County Public Health prevention staff have designed a pilot project focused on
middle school aged children who have been impacted by opioids with the goal of increasing the
presence of protective factors and decreasing their risks for behavioral health problems. Being
chronically absent from school has been identified as a key risk factor. Students who miss more than
10% of school days, the definition of chronically absent, are less likely to read proficiently by third
grade, more likely to fail in middle school and eventually, more likely to drop out of high school. In
2025, a quarter of all students in Maine were chronically absent from school. Children from
economically disadvantaged households were two times more likely to be chronically absent than their
non-economically disadvantaged peers (35% vs. 16%).
Responding to an urgent need to re-engage students and families in schools, CCPH proposes supporting
school districts most impacted by opioid use to design a comprehensive program focused on building
trusting relationships with families, breaking down barriers to attendance, and getting students back to
school.
Why Home Visits? Supportive Home Visitation is a targeted (Tier II) student intervention that serves as
part of a comprehensive system of support for families whose students are struggling with consistent
attendance. Its mission is to build trusting relationships with families to ultimately positively impact
students' engagement and attendance. Students at-risk of or already chronically absent and disengaged
from school are identified by the school. Supportive home visits are scheduled opportunities for a pair of
home visitors to go to the home of an identified student to meet with a parent or guardian for the purpose
of strengthening the school-family relationship in a positive and relational manner. Supportive Home
Visitation has been shown to significantly improve school attendance, increase trust between families
and school staff, and improve educational outcomes for students.1 2
Scope of Work & Project Specifications:
Cumberland County Public Health (CCPH) implements comprehensive strategies to prevent the
initiation and continued use of commercial tobacco; prevent early substance use, high risk substance use
and substance use disorders; and promote healthy eating and active living.
CCPH seeks two (2) schools to conduct family-centered Supportive Home Visits at the middle school
level.
1 Sheldon & Jung, Student Outcomes and Parent Teacher Home Visits: https://pthvp.org/wp-
content/uploads/2022/03/student-outcomes-and-parent-teacher-home-visits.pdf
2 CCERC, An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Home Visits for Re-Engaging Students Who Were Chronically Absent in
the Era of Covid-19: https://attendanceworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/CCERC-Report-
LEAP_01_24_2023_FINAL.pdf

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The purpose of the home visitation pilot is:
* To provide early intervention supports in communities highly impacted by opioids
* To bolster school-based family engagement efforts
* To review and use data to implement strategies targeted at those students most at risk of school
disengagement
* To measure the effectiveness of a Supportive Home Visitation model in enhancing student and
family engagement in school; and positively influencing attendance data
* To provide evidence of the effectiveness of home visiting models and to provide a platform for
sustainability and advocacy
The project values are adapted from the LEAP Model of Supportive Home Visiting3 and include:
* Trusting relationships between school, families, community, and CCPH
* Flexibility of the project to adapt to the strengths and needs of families and schools
* Collaboration between partners is key: We all have value and expertise to add
* Data driven: Data on chronic absenteeism and factors impacting it is imperative for
understanding who will most benefit from Supportive Home Visitation
* Culturally responsive to the experiences and identities of families, schools, and communities
* Voluntary for all: Families and school staff are never forced to participate
The project deliverables consist of the following elements:
* Identification of 1-2 risk and/or protective factors connected to attendance that the school will
agree to collect data on throughout the academic year
* Creation (or adaptation) of a team focused on using data and a collaborative approach to (re)
engaging students through a preventative, family-centered approach
* Data workbook or other tool to document participant student assets and risks
* A well-articulated, community-specific plan for engaging at least 10 families with home
visitation supports
* Implementation of a minimum of 3 home visits per family during the grant period
* Develop a uniform mechanism to document learning experiences and collect data about
Supportive Home Visits.
Funding:
3 Learner Engagement and Attendance Program LEAP: https://portal.ct.gov/sde/chronic-absence/learner-engagement-and-
attendance-program-leap

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Partner Schools would be eligible for a grant to partner with CCPH in the exploratory and co-design
phase, and to implement the pilot project.
Allowable expenses include:
* Staff time for project design and ongoing project management (i.e., compensation for members
of the Implementation Team)
* Compensation for Supportive Home Visitors (i.e., members of the school or from a community
agency doing visits outside of their contracted work hours)
* Materials that support families with attendance (e.g. alarm clocks)
Max award per school: $15,000
Total allocation for pilot project: $30,000
Anticipated Project Timeline:
Fall:
* Identify Team of 2-4 key staff (could be an existing team) to collaborate on pilot project design
and implementation. Within this team, identify a primary point of contact. This is your
Implementation Team. These staff are not necessarily the individuals who will be doing the home
visitation; they are staff with authority, decision-making power, access to data systems, and an
understanding of existing family engagement strategies.
* School and CCPH staff identify additional partners, i.e. community-based providers and
organizations, to bolster basic needs and other resources that support attendance and family
engagement.
* CCPH will collaborate with the Implementation Team to review attendance data and map
existing responses to chronic absenteeism.
Winter:
* Identify a team of home visitors. Home visitors may be any willing school staff member with a
supportive mindset including administrators, teachers, student support staff, family liaisons, or
community partners.
* Implementation Team and CCPH will create and/or build out systems to review attendance data
and other social measures of well-being over time to allow for continuous improvement.
* Implementation Team will use chronic absence and other data to prioritize who receives
Supportive Home Visits.
* Home visitors participate in training to implement Supportive Home Visits according to the
available research-based models.
* Implementation Team will develop a family engagement strategy and materials.
* Implementation Team will recruit a minimum of 10 families for participation in the project.

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Spring and Summer:
* Complete 3 home visits per family during the grant period.
* Home visitors participate in meetings facilitated by CCPH, with other implementation partners to
debrief their visits with families.
* Implementation Team will apply a Continuous Quality Improvement lens to the project design
by adjusting protocols and approaches to meet the needs of the families while considering
fidelity to the model.
Criteria for Applying:
* Preference will be given to communities that have been disproportionately impacted by opioids.
* Other factors for inclusion include:
o Schools that serve middle school-aged students,
o Schools with higher rates of chronic absenteeism,
o Schools that utilize a Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) framework to assess
student well-being, and
o Communities with higher rates of economically disadvantaged families.
* Teams must be willing to co-design and collaborate and have the capacity to meet with CCPH
in-person routinely throughout the project period.
Proposal Submission Requirements:
Please provide a response to each item listed below.
Staff Experience (300 words or less): Please provide the roles and qualifications of the specific staff
that would be part of the Implementation Team and identify who would be the point person/lead at the
school.
* What experience does your school and/or the proposed individual team members have with
MTSS and/or family engagement? In what ways have teams or individuals at your school
demonstrated a commitment to collaborating and sharing expertise?
* What experience do the proposed staff have with examining student behavior and well-being
data? (Maximum score for section: 25 points)
Community Need (300 words or less): Please describe how your school's student population match the
"criteria for applying" listed above.
* What data do you have about family well-being?
* What data do you have about the extent to which families and/or communities in your district
have been impacted by opioids? (Maximum score for section: 25 points)

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Alignment with Project Values (500 words or less, see Project Values on page 3): Please describe how
the project would align with or bolster existing attendance, engagement and MTSS work at your school.
* What are your school's current barriers to meaningfully engaging families, and what practices
exist for building trusting relationships with marginalized students and families?
* To what extent does your school have experience engaging and collaborating with community
partners to enhance student and family well-being?
* Please describe how data is currently being used to prioritize which students receive which
services and supports. What are the school's areas of growth in each of these areas (i.e.,
collaboration, trusting relationships, and data-driven approaches) and in what ways would this
project support growth? (Maximum score for section: 40 points)
Cost (200 words or less): Please provide a budget for the project and brief descriptions for each cost
element. Budgets should specify allocations per team member, including specific compensation for the
home visitors and implementation team members. If supplies are requested, please provide an allocation
per family, budgeting for the 10 families, and examples of the supplies you anticipate families needing
to support attendance. Total project cost should not exceed $15,000. See Appendix A below for an
example budget template. (Maximum score for section: 10 points)
Appendix A
Budget template
Expense Budget justification/description: Total
Stipends/Staff
Time
Supplies
Travel
Other
Total
Budget Justification. Please provide a detailed justification for each line item.