AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine would send $8 million more to Maine’s child welfare system and give an independent watchdog more authority to oversee it under two different proposals outlined by Gov. Janet Mills on Monday.
The actions from the Democratic governor are similar to reform ideas in a raft of bills from lawmakers this year. The child welfare system has been under the microscope in fits and starts since 2018 and attention to it heightened after the deaths of four children last June.
One of the main focuses has been the relationship between the Maine Department of Health and Human Services and Child Welfare Ombudsman Christine Alberi, who has long argued that state caseworkers struggle to assess a child’s safety in initial investigations and during the reunification process. She has said her limited staff makes it hard to keep up with inquiries.
Alberi’s concerns came to a head when two members of her office’s board of directors quit, saying the department was resisting Alberi’s efforts to investigate child deaths with prior state involvement. Emails showed the state hesitated for a time to give Alberi information her office can gather under state law, but both sides have said their communication has improved.
Mills’ measures, which must be approved by the Legislature, would be a step toward addressing some of the problems that Alberi and others have recently flagged. The state would spend $8 million more to hire more case workers and start new programs to help families involved with the system. Alberi would also get more legal authority to oversee the system.
“This bill will enhance the independence and productiveness of our office in order to more effectively do our part in the statewide efforts to enhance the protection of Maine’s most vulnerable children,” Alberi said in a statement.
The $8 million for the system will be contained in Mills’ supplemental budget proposal, which is expected to be unveiled after her State of the State address on Thursday. That spending plan will be the starting point for negotiations on how Maine’s $800 million revenue surplus will be spent through mid-2023.
Mills promised to hire 19 workers for night and weekend shifts, an area an external probe into the department found was struggling last fall. A $2.2 million program would focus on in-home crisis intervention and counseling for those in the reunification process. Another $2 million boost to a family coaching program is meant to help children reunified with parents stay with them.
The changes to Alberi’s office would come in a separate bill. Mills would lengthen the ombudsman’s term from one to five years, give her office the ability to hire more staff and require the state to communicate with the office prior to making policy changes or when a child dies after having contact with the child welfare system.
Those changes include parts of some bills under consideration this year that were already likely to succeed, as the child deaths last year sparked concern from both parties about the system’s ability to monitor children’s safety.
Whether the state will be open to bigger changes remains to be seen. Lawmakers have proposed limiting caseworker hours, maintaining an alternate response program and prioritizing child homicide cases. It has resisted efforts to split the child welfare office into its own department and create early intervention programs in the past.
The proposed changes are a good start and a sign that public calls for change are increasing pressure on the state, Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, one of the department’s more vocal critics, said. But he also characterized them as maintaining the status quo with more aggressive efforts needed.
“It keeps everything in place,” he said. “But the fact that the governor is coming out and making a statement about this shows the groundswell is being felt.”