Hearing the public

The Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee has just begun a thorough review of Maine’s child protective system. Though sparked by a single incident – the suffocation death of 5-year-old foster child Logan Marr last winter – this review would be necessary and overdue even without that tragedy.

The lawmakers on the committee deserve praise for taking on this extraordinarily difficult task. They are going well beyond what their offices require; while most of their colleagues are on break until the Legislature reconvenes in January, these 13 will attend twice-monthly, daylong meetings.

But with just one meeting completed, there already is danger that this vital inquiry may lose its way. The issue is whether the committee will hold public hearings throughout the state or whether it will make the public come to Augusta. Field hearings were an important part of the committee’s original stated plan, but now some members are wavering, concerned that the sessions might become nothing more than noisy gripe fests.

Of course these hearings will be noisy and, considering the wrenching issues in play, griping is an understatement. But public agencies hold field hearings all the time on many emotion-provoking though less crucial matters and find ways to keep them civil and productive through modest ground rules. A state that can hold field hearings on shellfish regulations or bridge projects surely can hold them on the subject of how it deals with abused and neglected children.

The committee has designated its next meeting, Aug. 24, as Family Day, in which foster children and both biological and foster parents are invited to come to the State House to describe their experiences. This is fine, but not nearly enough. The social and economic disparities that plague Maine show up glaringly in the child-protective system and the difficulty low-income people from remote regions will have in traveling to Augusta on a workday will ensure that the Family Day testimony will not tell the whole story.

A particularly sad example of that disparity is family reunification. In the Department of Human Services region that consists of the counties of Washington, Hancock and part of Aroostook, children taken into the foster system are eventually reunited with their biological parents only 18 percent of the time. The rates in the much more affluent regions of southern Maine are nearly double. The committee can understand why this is so (lack of access to necessary services is a prime suspect) and propose a remedy only if it goes to Ellsworth, to Machias, to Houlton and hears real stories from real people.

There is plenty to hear. DHS child protection has long been the subject of many horror stories, and there has been a marked increase since Logan Marr died with duct tape over her mouth. The details vary, as may the accuracy of the facts, but the themes are common: parents accused of abuse or neglect are presumed guilty; department decisions are capricious, sometimes vindictive; the system is driven more by a profit motive than by a desire to make troubled families whole. As Rep. Eddie Dugay, a committee member and strong advocate for field hearings, puts it, the purpose of the hearings will not be to solve cases but to detect patterns and trends.

A final reason these field hearings are necessary is that there are individuals and organizations, in state and without, devoted to reforming, even dismantling, the child- protective system; some are sincere, some seek political gain. Just the suggestion that the committee may back away from its original intent has generated a flurry of press releases, letters and e-mails describing this just-begun inquiry as a whitewash in the making. The committee will decide on these field hearings at that Aug. 24 Family Day meeting. Its vote will determine whether the product of the next five months will be to contribute to the suspicion and anger or whether it will take a major step towards rebuilding the public’s faith in Maine’s child-protective system.