AUGUSTA – The recommendations handed down last year by the committees investigating the Department of Human Services will do little, if anything, to address the agency’s problems, a national children’s expert said Thursday.

During a news conference at the State House, Richard Wexler of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform outlined the issues as he sees them.

He said the proposals issued by the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee were much too vague, but that their “overall tone sends DHS in the right direction.” The committee deserves a B minus, he said.

The second study group, the Committee to Review the Child Protective System, came away with a grade of D, because, Wexler said, “it barely recommended anything.” It was appointed by the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee.

That second committee was working with a “stacked deck” since its membership didn’t include a parent whose children had been taken by DHS or a former foster child, Wexler said.

Still, both groups deserve A for their “intense and sincere effort to learn about child welfare and try to fashion real solutions,” he said.

Wexler chose the first anniversary of the death of 5-year-old foster child Logan Marr to issue his statements, which were accompanied by his second annual report on ways to improve Maine’s child welfare system.

Titled “Safe At Home,” the study contained 20 recommendations that Wexler contends would make children safer, while reducing the number taken from their homes.

The reforms include changing financial incentives so private agencies aren’t discouraged from reunifying families, raising caseworkers’ pay, opening court hearings and almost all case records to the public, requiring caseworkers to audio tape interviews, and allowing parents who believe they’ve been wronged to sue the department.

During a visit last year, Wexler issued a report charging that the state endangers children by taking too many of them from homes that are safe or could be made safe with the right type of services. DHS has one of the worst records for placing children with relatives, even though such placement is safer, he stated in the report.

Based in Alexandria, Va., the NCCPR is funded by grants from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Open Society Institute, according to its Web site.

Both committees’ investigations were spurred by the death of Logan Marr of Chelsea, who allegedly was suffocated by her foster mother. The case has become a symbol of the problems DHS has guaranteeing the safety of its charges.

Wexler said Thursday that the Health and Human Services Committee’s recommendations, such as requiring DHS to improve kin and sibling contact and to monitor compliance with laws, are so “terribly, frustratingly vague and general.

“They might work if the agency wasn’t in denial,” he said.

He took the Committee to Review the Child Protective System to task for “settling mostly for tinkering here and there and endorsing the work of others now and then.

“Even where the committee recommends something that looks like a change, it includes so many loopholes that DHS can claim to go along while making no real changes at all,” Wexler said.

Requiring that DHS only tape interviews with children leaves workers free to misunderstand and misrepresent parents, he said.

Wexler also was disappointed that the committee voted not to raise the standard of proof the state should meet before taking a child from his or her parents.

“Perhaps, had such a higher standard existed, Logan Marr would be alive today,” he said in his report.

Meanwhile, on Thursday Rep. Eddie Dugay, D-Cherryfield, a member of the Health and Human Services Committee, said his group and DHS are working to make more definitive changes.

The committee plans to ask DHS each month to report on indicators such as the number of children placed with relatives and the number of families receiving substance abuse treatment.

“Each month we’ll have a snapshot from DHS so we can tell at a glance what’s going on,” Dugay said.

His committee’s investigation has helped in other ways, he said. DHS officials are looking into putting more money toward substance abuse treatment for families. And they have asked the Casey Foundation, a children’s advocacy group, to put together a software program to help them assess data, Dugay said.

The department has hired a substance abuse educator and counselor to work with the DHS office in Washington County, he said.

Rep. Charles Laverdiere, D-Wilton, a member of the Committee to Review the Child Protective System, said he wished Wexler had attended more than one of the group’s meetings.

“The people on the committee we think provided a good balance and thoughtfully and carefully reviewed the information available from experts within the state,” he said Thursday.

LaVerdiere said the committee’s recommendations that required legislation would be put into one bill that currently is being drafted. A public hearing will be scheduled, he said.

Sen. Susan Longley, D-Liberty, chair of the Health and Human Services Committee, said earlier this week that the group is meeting weekly to get a sense of what recommendations need a fiscal note and what could be done within existing resources.

“The goal is to make the system accountable and protect the children, and whether that comes in the form of one bill or two bills or no bills, that’s secondary to the goal of making sure we get the job done,” she said.