● Maine Governor’s child welfare proposals represent the triumph of fear and ignorance over proven success. They will make all of Maine’s children less safe.
● The Maine Legislature, children’s last line of defense against these dangerous bills, is scheduled to hold a hearing on them today.
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| What do Donald Trump and Maine Gov .Paul LePage have in common? Among other things, a willingness to exploit tragedy to justify needlessly tearing apart families. (Photos by Gage Skidmore) |
An email roundup of media news and commentary from Columbia Journalism Review last week highlighted
how Donald Trump has exploited
the death of Mollie Tibbetts, allegedly killed by an undocumented worker,
to push his agenda of fear and hatred toward immigrants. As CJR noted, the White House rushed out a
video featuring relatives of people killed by undocumented workers – and, of
course, Fox News was glad to amplify the message.
All of it was in support of the Big Lie of American
immigration. Or, as CJR explained:
The president’s hardline immigration stance is grounded in the false belief that undocumented immigrants represent a clear and present danger to American citizens, and Tibbetts’s murder fits the narrative that has been a hallmark of Trump’s rhetoric since the first moments of his campaign.
(CJR should have said false claim – we don’t know if even Trump
really believes it.)
At almost
exactly the same time, in Maine, Gov. Paul LePage -- often referred to as
Trump-before- lying, racism, vulgarity and miscellaneous
cruelty --
was announcing a series of
measures to finish the job of undoing one of the nation’s most successful child
welfare reforms.
Like Trump, he invoked horror
stories: The deaths of two children known-to-the-system, Kendall Chick and
Marissa Kennedy. And, like Trump, he
invoked a Big Lie – this time the Big Lie of American
child welfare, that family preservation is at odds
with keeping children safe.
What the LePage Bills would do
Not everything in LePage’s plan is wrong. He’s right to propose a pay raise for caseworkers and he wants to improve information technology.
But the major change proposed
by LePage involves changing a single paragraph in state law. It’s in the part where the legislature
explains its intent. This section of law already accepts – in its very first paragraph – the false premise that family
preservation and child safety are at odds.
LePage proposes to deemphasize helping families even further.
Other proposals encourage a
massive increase in the reporting of false allegations and trivial cases,
further overloading caseworkers.
So on balance, this package of bills represents the triumph
of fear and ignorance over proven success.
It will make all of Maine’s children less safe.
No system can prevent every child abuse tragedy. But Maine
spent years transforming its system from a national disgrace into a national
model – according to no less than Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, which
made the state’s reforms a finalist for its Innovations in American Government
Awards.
Indeed, even the tragedies now in the news did not occur
during the administration of former Gov. John Baldacci when the reforms were in
effect. They occurred after the LePage Administration already had begun dismantling
those reforms.
Gov. LePage is proposing to do to children in Maine what his
idol, Donald Trump, did to children at the Mexican border – tear them
needlessly from their families and wreak havoc on their psyches, or worse. And
if anyone says “but this is different, we’re doing it to keep children safe” –
remember, Trump said everything he did was in the name of safety. (See examples
here
and here. In fact, the LePage administration already is
doing it, forcing children to spend their days in offices and
their nights in hotels.
Here’s how some of the governor’s bills make all children
less safe:
● They doom far more children to be consigned to the chaos
of foster care. Most cases are nothing
like the horror stories. Far more common
are cases in which family poverty is confused
with “neglect.” That’s why study after study after study has found that,
in typical cases, children left in their own homes fare better even than
comparably maltreated children placed in foster care.
● They doom far more children to endure abuse in foster care
itself. Most foster parents do the best
they can for the children in their care.
But the rate of abuse in foster care is far higher than generally
realized and far higher than states admit in their own statistics – which
involve states, in effect, investigating themselves. Multiple
independent studies have found abuse in one-quarter to one-third of foster
homes. The rate of abuse in group homes
and institutions is even worse.
The more that foster care systems are overloaded with
children who don’t need to be there – as is happening already in Maine and will
worsen if these bills become law – the greater the temptation to lower
standards for foster parents and ignore warnings about abuse in foster care.
Forgetting the lessons of Logan Marr
If there is one state that should have learned that lesson
it’s Maine – after the tragic death of Logan Marr. And, of course Maine did learn the lesson – and crafted a child welfare system that
dramatically curbed needless removal of children, with no compromise of safety. During the Baldacci administration, the Maine
system was among the best evidence in America that you can’t have child safety without family preservation.
In what is perhaps an all-to-fitting legacy, what Paul
LePage is doing now is like spitting on Logan Marr’s grave.
Facts and evidence mean nothing to Paul LePage. And, apparently, neither does child
safety. Because what LePage already has
been doing, and proposes to make worse through this legislation, makes all
Maine children less safe.
That’s because the real reasons for deaths of children
“known to the system” almost always involve overwhelmed workers missing warning
signs because they have no time to investigate any case properly. For years, LePage has been overwhelming them
even more.
Even without specific bills, LePage has sent his marching
orders to DHHS, orders that boil down to “take the child and run.” So workers are even more likely to make
mistakes in all directions. With no time to investigate any case properly
workers are more likely to take more children needlessly and also more likely to leave more children
in danger.
That’s why the only child welfare systems in America that
have ever succeeded in improving child safety are those that have done more to
keep families together – as Maine did during the Baldacci Administration. In
contrast, no child welfare system anywhere in America has made children safer
by doing what LePage is proposing to do now.
And it’s not just the bill demanding that Maine further
deemphasize helping families that endangers children.
● Add to it his bill criminalizing the failure of mandated
reporters to report anything and everything. That means a lot of scared doctors
and teachers, among others, will be calling in all sorts of cases they know are
nonsense - because they’ll be afraid to do anything else. So caseworkers will
be wasting even more time spinning their wheels. They’ll have even less time to
make sound decisions – and even less time to find children in real danger. And, by the way, there is no evidence that mandatory reporting
itself improves child safety; and many one-time supporters of the practice have
had second thoughts. [UPDATE, AUGUST 18: This bill was defeated in committee.]
The state’s press release says “keeping these records allows
the department to determine whether the family has exhibited a certain history
or pattern of behavior.” But it is far more likely to reveal only a “pattern”
of being victimized by false reports.
The proposed law is an invitation to anyone with a grudge against a
former friend, a neighbor or an ex-spouse: Just keep calling in false reports
and eventually it will stick.
By definition, children are defenseless. Right now the Maine Legislature is their last
line of defense against proposed laws that will make all of them less safe.
