CALAIS – Children up to 6 years old are the focus of a five-year, $3.5 million Washington County project announced Tuesday that will create a rapid response team to deal with violence in the home, school and community.

The project aims to create a comprehensive “delivery system” targeting the needs of children and their families, as well as to provide services to meet those needs.

Keeping Children Safe Downeast is funded through the U.S. Department of Justice, while the local initiative is made up of the state Department of Human Services, Washington Hancock Community Agency and the Regional Medical Center at Lubec, as well as American Indian representatives.

The Washington County project is among 11 pilot projects across the country.

“We are working on the message that domestic violence is one of the most damaging forms of violence that children may experience,” said Sandra Prescott, executive director of the Washington Hancock Community Agency.

Nationally, three children die every day as a result of child abuse, usually at the hands of a family member or friend, and 78 percent of those children are younger than 5.

Maine experienced a 9 percent increase in domestic assaults reported between 2000 and 2001. In 2001, the total number of domestic assaults statewide was 4,922 – a rate of 386 per 100,000 adults. In Washington County in 2001, the total number was 94 cases, or a rate of 277 per 100,000 adults.

Another area of the program will train Washington County’s 5,000 “mandated reporters,” whose job it is to detect and report suspected child abuse to authorities. Many “mandated reporters” work in the health care industry.

Meanwhile, local groups represented in the initiative recently completed a telephone survey of 447 Washington County homes to gauge perceptions residents have in regard to domestic violence and children.

The survey reported:

. 77 percent of those questioned believe that young children exposed to violence is not a problem in their community.

. Respondents said family violence occurs in nearly 30 percent of the households.

. A trend of abuse over the generations. “Almost one out of five adults were threatened and-or physically assaulted as a child by an adult in their home,” said Michel Lahti, director of evaluation services at the Institute for Public Sector Innovation, Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine.

. Many women said they believed the level of children’s exposure to violence is a big problem.

. Medical and health care providers were doing a good job at helping children, but churches and religious organizations have fallen down on the job and were viewed as the “least likely to help,” according to survey results. “This finding may have implications for outreach to the faith community, and it supports other evidence that pediatricians and health care providers are important sources of referral and support,” the survey said.