The story on Feb. 1 regarding the imminent closure of Project Atrium in Bangor certainly resonated with me. Over the past two years, the state has seen more than a 44 percent decline in the use of children’s residential beds for the behaviorally and emotionally disturbed. For my agency, this has necessitated laying off numerous staff members, placing four closed and vacant residences on the market and eliminating one leased facility. There are more residential closures to come.

We agree that the ultimate goal in child welfare services should be family reunification. However, we become gravely concerned when such a drastic policy shift occurs at the Department of Health and Human Services without real input from providers and families, and with little measure of client outcomes achieved, other than savings in the Medicaid account.

We would like to believe the children for whom the state cannot account at this time have been safely reunited with their families or transitioned successfully to independent living. Having said that, I cannot contain my worry that some, if not a great proportion of these Maine youths, have fallen by the wayside with no safety net in place. We continue to receive anecdotal stories of more children and adolescents in homeless shelters, within the corrections system, or out on the streets of our cities and towns.

What is particularly disturbing to me is that the state’s crackdown on the use of residential treatment for children, one of the highest levels of care, has not eventuated in the use of more services at lower levels of care. It is as though these high needs children have somehow disappeared from public view and concern.

Paul P. Peterson, Ph.D.

Sweetser

Saco