DHS, Overhauled

The draft timeline for overhauling and merging the Department of Human Services and the Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services extends through January 2006. It is an enormous undertaking, as comprehensive as anything any other state has attempted and affecting all of the 3,700 state employees in those departments, the thousands of nonprofit agency employees and, eventually, tens of thousands of Maine families.

A committee appointed by Gov. John Baldacci early this year is due to turn in a final report in a few weeks containing its recommendations for what should happen next. Given that more than 200 volunteers worked countless hours on its six subcommittees, the committee’s report should be as detailed and complex as the problems it tries to solve. But for the public, the measures of success with the merger are fairly simple:

. Does the merger result in a single point of entry – one phone number – where callers are not given another bunch of phone numbers to call but get their questions answered?

. Does it result in a family or child getting one overall assessment, which various bureaus within the new department can use to avoid subjecting someone to the same questions four, six or 10 times?

. The same goes for caseworkers: Will a child have one caseworker to address whatever services he needs or will the current system of multiple caseworkers continue?

. Is the new system accountable? When DHS takes a child is there a means for a family to find out specifically why and what the appeals process is?

. Are there single offices for contracting, licensing and information technology?

. Is there substantial support both for families in the system and the people who deliver the services, who currently are sometimes not given adequate time or information to provide the kind of service they would like?

. Will its finances be held to a higher level of accountability?

. Will the new department be able to admit when it is wrong, be forthright with the public and will the public, in turn, feel it no longer needs to stage pickets and marches? Will those who complain about DHS feel safe from retaliation?

Valerie Landry, former commissioner of labor and the head of the governor’s reform committee, points out that bringing two substantial departments together does not need to result in more bureaucracy and could result in less. The total size of the new department would not be very large by the standards of other states and, if successful, would provide faster, more useful service than what is currently provided. Over time, workers are likely to assume new duties in service and spend less time on the paperwork and duplicative record-keeping that the current system requires.

The reforms being contemplated are difficult to carry out and there is no absolute measure for success. The Maine’s Children’s Alliance summarized its hopes by saying it wants the new system to focus on child and family support, improve access to services and “align state-supported services to achieve coordination, cost-effectiveness and to avoid confusing duplication.” Those are fair standards by which the new department should be judged.