AUGUSTA – The Health and Human Services Committee’s investigation into the Department of Human Services is barely out of the starting gate and already the Senate chairwoman of the legislative panel has ideas about how to improve the system.

One way could be to put the department through an accreditation process, according to Sen. Susan Longley, D-Liberty, who said former DHS Commissioner Michael Petit floated the suggestion during the committee’s first meeting earlier this month.

“Bravo to that idea! My sense is that this will absolutely make DHS more accountable and that could save children’s lives,” Longley said.

Based on “very good information” from Petit, formerly with the Child Welfare League of America, and other experts, including Chief Justice Daniel Wathen of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, Longley said she came up with a number of tentative recommendations.

The department should focus on helping families deal with substance abuse; ensure that parents receive services quickly; and provide caseworkers with more training and supervision.

Reflecting on what she has learned so far through discussions with experts during lunch meetings, public sessions and over the telephone, Longley said that a large percentage of DHS cases involve substance abuse and that services to parents aren’t always implemented within the 18-month federal deadline.

She also has come to realize through conversations with the public that caseworkers need more training to understand the behavior of birth parents.

Gleaning advice from experts is crucial if the committee is to make responsible recommendations, according to Longley.

“My modus operandi is to seek those with a lot of experience and expertise to help inform the process. We have a lot of work to do and DHS has an information advantage. For us to even attempt to get on an equal footing and exercise our jurisdictional oversight role in a responsible way, we have to know a lot about the system,” she said.

The Health and Human Services Committee, which will convene again Friday, Aug. 24, has scheduled nine meetings in which to review the department’s child protection and foster care systems.

At the same time, the Committee to Review the Child Protective System, an 11-member panel put together by the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, has been charged with examining the department’s court procedures.

Chaired by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles C. LaVerdiere, D-Wilton, and Sen. Karl W. Turner, R-Cumberland, the panel has scheduled an organizational meeting Tuesday.

Both investigations were spurred by the death of 5-year-old Logan Marr of Chelsea, who allegedly was suffocated by her foster mother. But legislators have said that even before the tragedy they received numerous complaints about the system.

Meanwhile, a national children’s advocate who blasted the DHS last spring for taking too many children from homes that could be made safe has criticized both panels’ approaches.

Richard Wexler, director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va., took the committees to task on a number of issues, including what he sees as members’ reluctance to allow public comment.

Wexler said the Committee to Review the Child Protective System should have included a birth parent, someone who has had a child taken by DHS. And he worried that the Health and Human Services Committee would use the Child Welfare League of America as its only resource.

The Health and Human Services Committee is gearing up for Family Day on Friday, when foster parents and foster children, as well as biological parents who have dealt with the DHS, get their turn at the microphone.

“We’re asking them to condense their stories,” said a committee member, Rep. Ed Dugay, D-Cherryfield, noting that each speaker will be kept to five minutes.

“We’re not trying to solve their particular cases, but to pick up trends and patterns – we just want to try and see where the system is failing,” said Dugay, who wants the committee to hold hearings in other parts of the state so residents unable to travel to Augusta can tell their stories.

Dugay also hopes later to bring in caseworkers and court-appointed attorneys to lend yet another perspective, he said.

After Friday’s public hearing, the committee will have a better handle on whether to hold meetings elsewhere, according to Longley, who said some members have expressed reservations about the idea.

Some legislators have worried about conducting emotionally charged discussions in areas without security, she said.

And some have wondered whether a forum for venting would help the committee work toward its mission to improve the system.

LaVerdiere said last week that his group would take public testimony, “though probably not around the state.”

“It wouldn’t be helpful to sit through hours and hours of testimony that’s more appropriate in front of a court,” he said.

But listening to people’s stories is the only way to effect change, according to Wexler.

“How else will the committees find out how much harm is done by DHS in the name of child protection?” he wrote in one of his e-mails to the Bangor Daily News.

Wexler warned against relying too heavily on the CWLA, saying that’s “where you go when you don’t really want to change.”

In a subsequent e-mail, he called the CWLA “a trade association for agencies themselves.”

“Agency dues finance it,” said Wexler, who sent several members of the Health and Human Services Committee a list of experts he hoped they would contact.

“They have sterling credentials and track records of actually reforming child welfare systems and making children safer,” Wexler wrote.

Those experts include Paul Vincent, who rebuilt the entire Alabama child welfare system when it was sued; Marc Cherna, who runs the human services agency for Allegheny County, Pa., and has cut the foster care population and improved safety outcomes for children; and Frank Farrow, who heads the Center for the Study of Social Policy in Washington, the nation’s leading think tank for child welfare issues.

But the Health and Human Services Committee’s House chairman, Rep. Thomas Kane, D-Saco, said the CWLA was a good place to start.

“The composition of the CWLA is very broad and I haven’t known them to subscribe to any one narrow philosophy of child welfare,” he said Saturday.

“I believe it’s a credible source of expertise, but it isn’t the only source. The committee has acknowledged from the beginning that we are going to be hearing from experts of different philosophical persuasions and [are going] to educate ourselves as to … the current state of the art … and the best practices.”

Also in his e-mail, Wexler wondered if “anyone has noticed anything odd” about the composition of the Committee to Review the Child Protective System.

“Isn’t there even one birth parent who feels DHS is too intrusive who might have a valuable contribution to make to the committee’s deliberations?” he wrote.

For his part, LaVerdiere denied a problem with representation and pointed out that the committee included attorneys for the birth parents.

But a Bangor mother whose four children spent two and a half years in foster care said she would have jumped at the chance to sit down with the panel.

“One of my biggest complaints is that when the judge sits up there on that stand the only thing she looks at is what the guardian ad litem or DHS puts in front of her,” said Sonya Candage.

“Never once was I able to dispute it. If I tried to dispute it, I wasn’t accepting responsibility for my actions. It’s as if you’re guilty until proven innocent.”

Candage also wished she and her children could have been allowed to work together as a family.

“If all of the services that fall into place after your children were taken were put into place before … a lot more would be accomplished,” she said.

Birth parents need an advocate, according to Candage, who said she quickly learned that she was her own best ally.

“I sat for a month in my apartment with the shades drawn and doors locked, then I woke up one morning and said, ‘What do I have to do?’

“I sat down and made a list and just went and did it,” said Candage, who found parent education classes and counseling services for her and her children.

Candage said she emerged from her ordeal a better person. “In the end, I learned about parenting, about nurturing your children and about how to be assertive.”

Even so, she can’t forget the price she paid.

“Try living every day as though someone has their hand around your heart,” she said.