To better understand the nature of the residential facilities serving more than 19 percent of Maine’s Long Term Services and Supports (LTSS) population, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services commissioned the Muskie School to conduct a survey of residential facilities as part of its update to Maine’s LTSS profile. The goal of the Maine Residential Settings Characteristics Survey, conducted between July and September 2010, was to measure the "homelike" characteristics of residential settings.

The survey sample comprised a total of 636 facilities which included all licensed residential care facilities or private non-medical licensed institutions. The survey response rate was 82.9%, and survey questions collected information about the facilities' physical characteristics and features, services, resident characteristics, and policies relating to autonomy and privacy.

Suggested citation:

Fralich J, McGuire C, Griffin E. "Homelike" Characteristics of Maine's Residential Services: A Survey of Maine's Residential Service Settings (2010). (Chartbook).  Portland, ME: University of Southern Maine, Muskie School of Public Service; November 2012.

Over the past several decades, federal policy has made states and communities increasingly more responsible for providing long-term care for older adults. The Community Partnerships for Older Adults, a national program of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, saw this as an opportunity to explore new, sustainable ways to meet current and future needs for community-based longterm care. This initiative focuses on collaborative organizational partnerships, a distinctive philosophy of teaching and learning through the exchange of experience between communities, and program learning focusing on known factors promoting organizational sustainability. Using principles that emphasize the development of social capital and collective efficacy, the authors present a case study of the early experiences of this initiative to address the challenges inherent in meeting the growing supportive service needs of older adults. The implications of this multisite community intervention for social work education and practice in aging are discussed.