Maine Child Welfare System Still Clueless After All These Years

Please, Maine, stop trafficking tiny humans, please.

I do not know how many times I must castigate the child welfare system of Maine, but all is well, as it is a secret delight to ridicule traffickers of tiny humans.

DHHS reviews child abuse cases it contracted out

In the spirit of fuchsia...

AUGUSTA (BDN) — Maine’s child welfare program is revisiting six-and-a-half months of child abuse reports it received and referred to contractors who intervene in “lower-risk” abuse and neglect cases.

Those "referred contractors" are third party, privatized, NGOs who are beholden to no one, because they are contracted.

The Office of Child and Family Services earlier this month asked the four contractors who handle those lower-risk cases to comb through their records dating back to last Aug. 31 and re-report to the state many of the families whose cases they were assigned. The state would then review those cases.

All they do is file cost reimbursements for crappy programs that a group of sanctimonious, childless fanatics came up with to maximize revenue.

Maine Children's Trust Fund Is A $23 Million Money Laundering Operation

The request indicates that the state’s alternative response programs, which the four contractors run in their respective regions, are one area of focus for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services following the deaths of 10-year-old Marissa Kennedy and four-year-old Kendall Chick, allegedly at the hands of their caregivers. The department has said little about those individual cases, so it’s not yet known whether the department had assigned either family to an alternative response program.

The leadership of Maine Department of Health and Human Services is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, which is why she took the job.

Why Maine Is So Secretive In Privatization: It Stripped Civil Rights Out Of Child Welfare

In a March 12 memo, the state asked its four alternative response contractors to identify the families assigned to them since Aug. 31 with whom their social workers never made contact, who refused services from the social workers, or who stopped working with the social workers before their abuse and neglect cases were closed. The department set a March 23 deadline for the contractors to report those families to state intake workers by phone or email.

The state is not going to do anything, even if they miss the deadline, or even when the reports come in showing a cover up of complete ineptitude in ethics or human compassion.

Maine To Fast Track Trafficking Tiny Human Asset Forfeiture Policies

Those contractors, all nonprofit organizations, are normally required to supply that information through the department’s child welfare information system, called MACWIS. DHHS asked them to continue making the reports through calls or emails to intake workers who staff the state’s child abuse reporting hotline going forward.

Maine Termination of Parental Rights Policy

“It appears that OCFS is playing catch up on cases that were referred to Alternative Response,” Pamela Day, a former director of child welfare services and standards at the Child Welfare League of America, wrote in an email after reviewing the March 12 memo. “They may also be trying to ascertain what they missed with cases that go back to last August 31.”

Emily Spencer, a DHHS spokeswoman, said the department’s request to the alternative response contractors is part of an internal review of Child Protective Services ordered by Gov. Paul LePage following Marissa Kennedy’s and Kendall Chick’s deaths.

Maine Bill: Citizen Medicaid Fraud Busters Could Reap Cash Award

“It is important that in our review, we are taking a holistic look at areas possibly in need of improvement,” Spencer wrote in an email. “We want to ensure that we are leaving no stone unturned when evaluating how our system can best serve the children who depend on us.”

Pingree meets with LePage to discuss DHHS budget waivers

The alternative response programs work with families where children appear to be at low or moderate risk of being abused or neglected. They receive their assignments from Child Protective Services intake workers, who receive all initial reports of suspected child abuse and neglect, and sometimes from the division’s investigators after they’ve looked into abuse and neglect claims and determined they’re of low to moderate severity.

DHHS commissioner needs time to figure out why department is over budget

The state assigns its own Child Protective Services investigators to respond to cases it determines to be more serious. Unlike state child protective workers, alternative response workers can’t file petitions in court to remove children from unsafe houses. Whether parents engage with alternative response workers is voluntary.

Maine Busted In University Child Welfare Training Fraud Scheme

In most cases, alternative response workers work with families for about four months, said David McCluskey, executive director of Community Care, which contracts with the state to run the alternative response program in Aroostook, Hancock, Kennebec, Penobscot, Piscataquis, Somerset, Washington and York counties.

Maine Will Not Eat Its Medicaid Meat

Shawn Yardley, president and CEO of Community Concepts in Lewiston, said DHHS staff members should already have access to the information they’re requesting from the alternative response contractors since the contractors have to send that information to DHHS under the terms of their contracts.

Maine's Admission Of Guilt

“That wouldn’t be something we’d be sitting on,” said Yardley, whose organization provides alternative response services in Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties. “It would be something that should be viewable by the department as part of their normal course of work.”

Maine's Medicaid Publishing of Errors

The alternative response providers’ contracts also specify that they should report families back to DHHS when social workers find the cases are more severe than initially thought.

Maine Children's Services Administrators Need To Be Pubically Flogged

The organization KidsPeace is the alternative response contractor in Cumberland County. Rockland-based Home Counselors Inc. provides the service in Knox, Lincoln, Sagadahoc and Waldo counties.

Tom Farkas, a spokesman for the Maine State Employees Association, the largest union for state workers, called the number of cases affected by the March 12 request “huge” and said the move will “dramatically increase workloads” for workers in Child Protective Services.

Maine Funds Foster Care Fraud Factories

The number of cases DHHS has assigned to alternative response — rather than assigned to a state caseworker — has been on the rise in recent years, DHHS statistics show. Alternative response was also a popular option during Gov. John Baldacci’s administration, the statistics show.

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©