Maine has a chance right now to transform its Department of Human Services from a secretive, defensive child-protection agency that is the constant object of sound criticism and crackpot accusations to one primarily known for helping children and saving families. The chance arrives during a terrible budget crunch and a dozen other legislative distractions that are nowhere near as important as this sparkling opportunity.

At the moment, the problems at DHS are not acute – it is suffering from no immediate disaster worse than incompetent bookkeeping. But its more serious troubles are chronic and debilitating, and the department alone cannot solve them. Fortunately, after years of debate and denial, of tragic loss leading to weak commissions and immeasurable time spent countering the charges of the confused and the vindictive, there is constructive help inside the department and without if the department’s leaders can gather the confidence to accept it.

Mary Callahan, foster mother and articulate critic of DHS, has a wish list of improvements for the department’s Child Welfare Service. Dean Crocker, the service’s ombudsman since February, its public overseer, has a list of improvements, too. And Mike Norton, a director within the department’s Bureau of Child and Family Services, has the department’s own list, created before and after a recent federal review in which Maine, like all other states, failed. These lists exist as the Baldacci administration is doing what needed to be done years ago: merging DHS with the Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services and in the process chasing out some of its ghosts that haunt both departments.

The merger is part of the opportunity for transformation, but the real rarity is this: Those lists – the ones from a critic, the ombudsman and the department official – are surprisingly similar. Not identical and sometimes certainly they are in conflict, but they overlap often enough so if the department were remade only with the reforms upon which there is agreement, the change at DHS would be profound, life-altering for some of its clients.

Mr. Crocker, a former caseworker with 25 years of experience in the business of trying to keep or find safe homes for children, of keeping them from being abused, beaten or burned, says part of the problem is the work itself, in which “caseworkers go day to day doing a job that’s just awful.” He likens the department to a police station in which individual officers might quietly concede another officer made a mistake in an arrest, but outwardly join a blue wall of denial. What would help most, he said, is to make the system less adversarial. He mentions the cooperative family-court model that spends less time vilifying those involved in a dispute and more time figuring out what is best for the children. Mr. Norton of DHS also wants to lower the amount of adversity: “How good are we at customer service? We’re not very good because we don’t have the skills because we deal first with crisis.”

Ms. Callahan says care by relatives should be stressed more and that the financial rewards of foster care should be overhauled; Mr. Norton agrees and says DHS is changing both. Ms. Callahan says the legal defense provided to poor parents is inadequate, concluding about one case, “poverty is why she lost her kids.” Says Mr. Crocker, “Rich people don’t lose kids to the custody of the state” because they get better representation in court. They agree that caseworker turnover (30 percent a year) creates problems throughout the system and both Mr. Crocker and Ms. Callahan agree that parents should be able to choose an independent professional for evaluations and counseling. All say increased training for DHS staff is needed.

They do not agree on questions of confidentiality of records, immunity for caseworkers and the use of anonymous reporting, among other issues. They don’t have to agree on everything; they must agree on this crushing problem at DHS, described by Mr. Crocker: “They never say – they don’t have the ability to say – you’re right and I’m wrong.” Reforming DHS so that caseworkers, mid-level supervisors, department heads and the commissioner can look at the department’s performance in its most difficult, heart-breaking cases and be able to say, publicly, “We made a mistake and we’re going to do our best to fix it,” would do more for building accountability than any 10 other reforms. And sure, at first, the relentless critics of the department probably would make too much of such an admission, but over time the department would gain public trust and make the work a little less awful.

This confluence of calm agreement and the plans for a departmental overhaul come without a dramatic, frightening case in the headlines – you couldn’t name what needs to happen after an injured or murdered child and call it her law. This is for the best because there is no trauma to obscure the more systemic problems. And none of the people who serve on the committees trying to fix this system will be considered heroes if they bring together the best ideas from the many sides of this long, long debate. All they’ll do is make the lives of children better, restore families, maybe save a life or two.

Such opportunities do not arrive very often. The next chance may be many years, and many lives, away.

Todd Benoit is the BDN editorial page editor.