House members hope to pare fat from DHS bureaucracy

Two members of the Maine House of Representatives are among those in the Legislature working to revamp part of the human-services network by paring the immense bureaucracy that still tends to place vast power in the hands of a few.

Rep. Ruth Joseph, D-Waterville, vowed Monday to continue work on a proposal to create the Department of Children and Family Services, a new branch of the Department of Human Services that would focus the energy spent on dysfunctional families. Currently, she said, much of the DHS time and money targeted for this area are spent on administrative services run by political appointees.

Although Gov. John R. McKernan supported the idea as a gubernatorial candidate in 1986, he so far has failed to sign a bill to create the system after it passed the Legislature, Joseph said. In response to what is likely to be a pocket veto of the measure, Senate President Charles Pray and House Speaker John Martin established a blue-ribbon panel to work on the project.

Although the measure has been slowed by partisan politics, Joseph vowed that the supporters of the program would not abandon it.

“We cannot play politics with families in crisis,” she told about a dozen members of the National Association of State Vocal Organizations in Bangor Tuesday. “We will do this thing, it will happen. And whoever is governor next year will find this legislation on his desk for his signature.”

Come Jan. 1, 1991, Bangor and other towns in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties will begin — albeit on a shoestring budget — operation of a coordinated response system for child abuse referrals, according to Rep. Mary Cathcart, D-Orono.

The program will work to spread responsibility for handling the most difficult of cases, such as when a child must be taken from the home, by using a three-tiered system of assessment, diagnostic, and dispositional teams.

Currently, she said, most of the decision-making remains in the hands of individual caseworkers, many of whom are under-experienced and overworked. However, the system faces the problem that many social services programs face during a tight budget year — a lack of funding. While supporters hoped for nearly $800,000, it received only $172,635.

“Fewer mistakes will be made if this system works the way we want it to,” Cathcart said.