Experts weigh in on DHS concerns

AUGUSTA – Child welfare experts on Friday offered legislators an array of ideas to improve the Department of Human Services, such as involving biological parents from start to finish and rewarding case workers for finding children permanent homes.

Children in the system do better when they’ve had contact with their natural families – they run away less and stay off drugs, according to Timothy Nichols from the Cambridge Family Institute in Massachusetts, a training center for therapists who work with families.

“Daily conversations between caregivers and biological families are absolutely necessary. Parents should be at all meetings – they need to know what is being said about them, they need to be a part of the process from intake to discharge,” said Nichols, one of four panel members invited to help the Legislature’s Health and Services Committee investigate DHS’ protective and foster care systems.

Based on bills submitted last year, a task force under the auspices of the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee also is reviewing the department, focusing on court procedures.

The reviews come in the wake of the suffocation death of 5-year-old Logan Marr of Chelsea, who died last January while in foster care. Her foster mother has been charged with depraved indifference murder.

Kids may do well in foster care or in a group home, “but if their family isn’t involved in their treatment, their gains rarely are maintained when they return to the community,” Nichols told the group.

“Even if you could eliminate destructive families, when kids turn 18 they go back or search for them,” he said.

DHS should concentrate on people’s strengths instead of their faults, said Joanne Nicholson, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Agencies “view parents as deficient and write service plans based on their problems,” she said. “But you can’t make change happen when you’re building on deficiencies – people don’t want to engage you.”

Maine needs help building a better data system so it can veer away from relying on anecdotes, according to John Mattingly of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which advocates for disadvantaged kids and families.

Mattingly, who once ran the Ohio child protective system, said DHS should focus on recruiting, training and supporting good foster families in the same community as the children’s biological families “so they don’t lose everything.”

Also, agencies don’t pay enough attention to supervisors, according to Mattingly.

“They’re the heart of the system,” he said, adding that they should be compensated better and should be in charge of only five or six caseworkers at a time.

The department also should make sure that children have regular contact with caseworkers and that when one worker leaves someone is trained and ready to jump right in.

“If people aren’t always scrambling to cover someone else’s openings, the job is more doable,” he said.

Rewarding agencies for finding permanent homes for foster children has worked well in other states, according to Richard Wexler, director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va.

In Illinois, agencies are given financial incentives for placing children in adoptive homes or returning them to their biological families, and penalized for letting children languish in foster care, said Wexler, who spoke several weeks ago to the Judiciary Committee’s task force.

While Maine is considering establishing an ombudsman position, such a post might not solve any problems for DHS, according to Wexler.

Many times an ombudsman is aiming to become the next commissioner and simply adopts the “politically popular approach” of taking the child from the biological parents, Wexler said.

After Friday’s hearing, DHS spokesman David Winslow called the session “very useful.”

“What we heard today was the national perspective,” said Winslow, noting that some experts admitted they weren’t well-versed in all of Maine’s policies.

Winslow urged caution about some of the ideas that emerged.

“Sometimes you hear an idea that sounds good, but child welfare cases aren’t one size fits all,” he said.

DHS has made a concerted effort to keep parents in the loop when it’s appropriate, he said. “There shouldn’t be the implication that it doesn’t happen. It’s an area we’ve focused on and we’ve made a lot of progress.”