We can no longer fail the children of Maine

The worst emergency calls for a dispatcher, firefighter, police officer or paramedic involve an injured or sick child. The failure of a paramedic to save a child’s life continues to concern a paramedic long after the sirens have been turned off. I know because I have received all of these calls in my 35 year career as a first responder. The children who were hurt by the people who were supposed to love and care for them stayed with me.

As a Maine state senator, I no longer respond to 911 calls, but now hear the calls about the systemic failure of our child welfare system to protect our most vulnerable and valuable citizens. These calls come from burned-out caseworkers, frustrated social workers, grieving family members and from children themselves, like Austin, a 17-year-old father who was released from his mother’s care at age 12 and moved from nursing homes to new homes, hospitals, prison cells and eventually they were incarcerated in a facility in Tennessee.

My instinct to respond with sirens when children are involved is still there. That’s difficult to reconcile with my first term in the State House, where solving difficult problems requires hundreds of stakeholders and change can seem slow.

The Maine Child Welfare Services Ombudsman, the Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee, lawyers, journalists, foster parents and front-line child protective services workers have made it clear: The Department of Health is not effectively protecting children.

Although the state has spent over $1.6 million reviewing child welfare issues in recent years, Christine Alberi, Maine’s child welfare ombudsman, concluded in her 2023 report: “Unfortunately, the This year’s review of case-specific reports continues to show a decline in child welfare practices.” “And yet, despite all these efforts, and despite all these good people, like the foster mother and social worker featured in Austin’s story, we have no clear path to fixing the system.

Hardworking people must navigate a situation where behavioral health treatments are inadequate or sometimes non-existent, and where alternative education options, transportation options, specialized pediatricians, and appropriate juvenile justice interventions are lacking, which are not only necessary to keep children safe to ensure, but also to give them the chance of a happy and healthy future.

As we appoint a new commissioner, my colleagues and I must consider whether DHHS leadership will respond with the urgency necessary to put out the fire at the Office of Children and Family Services. While 21 of my Senate colleagues and I voted to remove the Office of Children and Family Services from DHHS and create its own department, the bill (LD 779) was not debated or voted on in the House of Representatives. Then-Senator. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, proposed a similar bill in 2021, which also passed the Senate but not the House. He expressed his disappointment that politics is hampering real reform, and I have to agree with him.

Since the bill failed, we’ve seen more bad news on child welfare – Maine is being sued by the federal government for failing to provide children with access to community-based behavioral health services; The number of Maine children in state care has risen to its highest level in 20 years as we struggle to find and fund foster homes and permanent housing. we are facing a backlog of court cases; and we learned that despite abuses, Maine has not inspected out-of-state youth mental health programs.

DHHS has received over 200 recommendations from the Legislature, citizen review boards and other partners to address the critical issue of staffing, burnout and retention faced by frontline staff and the failure to assess child safety and to communicate. The Government Oversight Committee has requested regular updates and the Ministry has complied.

But despite some progress (I was happy to learn of the 50 percent reduction in vacancies among frontline child welfare workers), there are too many of the necessary reforms outlined by the Government Oversight Committee last February, such as a plan for improvement of child welfare for management, are still “under development”. The time for planning and checking should be over. We must now help the 2,573 children in state care and work to ensure that no more children suffer abuse. The Department of Children and Family Services is on fire. As lawmakers, we cannot afford to wait for first responders. It’s up to us.

Frontline workers told the Government Oversight Committee they needed more training, more funding, more resources to support families, safe short-term housing options and the ability to make safe long-term decisions about reunification. We must reintroduce legislation to create a child protection agency independent of DHHS that is responsive, open and accountable to all stakeholders. We need an expanded independent ombudsman to protect the rights of all children, and we need more lawmakers to support funding for holistic, comprehensive services that are critical to an effective child welfare system and are long overdue in Maine.

Like Senator Diamond before me, I am committed to working with members on both sides of the aisle to take meaningful action. I’m tired of hearing that DHHS is too big to fail. We can no longer fail the children of Maine.

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