PANEL BACKS CHILD WELFARE OMBUDSMAN -- Former Orphans and Former Foster Children Speak Out

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Date Posted: 06:32:11 06/01/01 Fri
Author: billr
Subject: PANEL BACKS CHILD WELFARE OMBUDSMAN

www.portland.com/news

part of the story, cut and paste the above address

PORTLAND HERALD ONLINE
MAINETODAY.COM

Friday, June 1, 2001

Panel backs child welfare ombudsman

By GREGORY KESICH, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright � 2001 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
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AUGUSTA � A plan to create an independent office to investigate complaints about the state's child welfare program won unanimous support from a legislative panel that agreed on little else Thursday.

Members of the Health and Human Services Committee split over whether to authorize spending $7.5 million to hire 33 new staff members � including 18 child protective caseworkers � that Commissioner Kevin Concannon says the Department of Human Services needs to ensure the safety of foster children.

The split vote means the request will only have the committee's partial backing when it is presented today to the budget-writing Appropriations Committee, which is drafting a spending plan for new and expanded programs.

In addition to backing an ombudsman to review complaints, a majority of the Health and Human Services Committee favored buying new laptop computers for caseworkers and increasing their travel and cell phone budgets. But committee members, who were repeatedly interrupted Thursday for votes in the House and Senate, deferred any discussion of Concannon's policy proposals until a study of the system that is scheduled this summer.

Concannon's report is the result of an internal investigation conducted by department staff following the death of 5-year-old Logan Marr, who suffocated in her Chelsea foster home in January. Sally Schofield, her foster mother and a former DHS caseworker, has been indicted on a charge of manslaughter for allegedly binding the little girl in a chair and covering her mouth with duct tape.

The department has revealed several breaches of its policies in the Schofield case, including a failure to make quarterly home visits, as required by department policy. Sub- sequently, the department revealed that its workers in the past had failed to make those visits 23 percent of the time.

For several members of the committee, the death of Logan Marr is related to a shortage of staff at DHS, and that situation must be addressed before a study is conducted. Rep. Thomas Kane, D-Saco, said the state should respond to the death by putting more people to work protecting children right away.

"I would not want to be there the day after we have another crisis and say we did nothing to address it," Kane said. "It's a no-brainer to me."

But others on the committee were not as sure as Kane. Sen. Karl Turner, R-Cumberland, said he needed to see more data before he was convinced that the answer is more case workers.

"I don't know what the problem is," Turner said. "You might be right that it is simply a staffing situation, but my feeling is, you could end up adding 18 workers to a system that is screwed up."

The committee plans to spend the summer investigating ways to improve the child welfare program. The study, which would involve child care advocates, parental rights supporters and outside experts, would result in recommendations for changing the program.

The delay was supported Thursday by Elinor Goldberg, the executive director of the Maine Children's Alliance, who is a former DHS caseworker and an advocate for protecting children from abuse.

Goldberg said there is nothing in the department's plan that her group objects to, but she does not support reforming the system based on a secret internal review. Goldberg wants a public investigation into alleged problems with the child welfare system before the state starts offering solutions.

"What I don't support is . . . putting on a Band-Aid to stop the bleeding without us knowing what the wound is," she said.

Staff Writer Gregory Kesich can be contacted at 623-1031 or at: gkesich@pressherald.com

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Copyright � Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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