“There’s funding there to hire nurses,” said one nurse who's part of the lawsuit. “I don’t understand why the department isn’t hiring highly qualified nurses to work.” Read More
“How are we doing a good job for these kids, that we’ve removed them from their parents, they’re traumatized, they’re scared, and then we plop them in a hotel? How is that best for them?” Read More
The work was more expensive than keeping state employees on the job. Read More
“All of this duplication of effort, all this extra work is only further overloading DHHS, making it that much more likely that the workers are going to miss a case of a child in danger,” said Richard Wexler of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. Read More
It's still unclear how many facilities there would be, how many children they would house, how long residents would remain there, and who would run them. Read More
The services that exist today to help children with mental illness, autism and intellectual disabilities have their roots in key actions in the courts and state Legislature in the mid-1990s. Read More
Local agencies are unsure if they can continue providing the service long-term. Read More
The Maine Department of Health and Human Services has filled only about a quarter of the vacancies it was required to fill by March 1. Read More
“It is important that in our review, we are taking a holistic look at areas possibly in need of improvement,” said DHHS spokeswoman Emily Spencer. Read More
The Department of Health and Human Services' “door is wide open and families are being served inconsistently,” the state’s associate director of child welfare services told a state advisory panel last June. Read More
Six school districts have started working to take over special education services from the state’s Child Development Services system before any mandate comes down from the Legislature. Read More
Coastal Counties Workforce Inc. had sued the LePage administration in October over the governor’s refusal to release the $8.4 million in federal job training funds to three regional boards that oversee job training services in their local areas. Read More
“People’s lives have been changed, and it’s going to be a real loss for a lot of people in these communities if it ends." Read More
The annual price tag of $2.7 million is well more than double the $1.1 million set aside for the first year of the contract. Read More
In times of crisis, Maine adults with developmental disabilities are more likely to end up in emergency rooms because the Maine Department of Health and Human Services has allowed response capacity at social service agencies to dwindle to eight crisis beds statewide. Read More
“We’re incurring the expenses of 2018, and we’re working with a rate and revenue that is a decade old,” said Jennifer Putnam, executive director of the Progress Center in Norway, which runs six group homes in western Maine. Read More
The BDN examined what is holding back Maine students from realizing their full potential and highlighted examples of promising efforts to address many of the challenges facing Maine students and their schools head on. Read More
His administration hasn't produced the regulations needed to implement a 2 ½-year-old law that allows public health groups to give out naloxone at no cost. Read More
Maine's roughly equal per-student spending doesn't mean all students have an equal shot at meeting the state’s academic expectations. Read More
“They’re trying to reduce the caseload rolls and then use a fraction of the money to do something noble sounding,” said Samuel Hammond of the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C. Read More
