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| ...unless you're a child taken by the Maine family police - in which case you might never go home. (Photo by Jimmy Emerson) |
The Maine Morning Star has a good story about some data from Maine’s family police agency, the Office of Child and Family Services. OCFS is spinning the data, touting the simple fact that more children are leaving Maine foster care than entering as some kind of good news attributable to their efforts. More likely, it’s what one would expect due to inertia. It might be good news; it might not.
The exit/entry figure is more likely to mean simply that the foster-care panic in Maine is finally slowing down – as usually happens after a couple of years. So what does that mean? If you suddenly start taking away huge numbers of additional children then, of course, a couple of years later exits will exceed entries – simply because all those children needlessly taken are leaving the system one way or another, while entries have slowed from full-out panic levels.
Of course, the fact that the panic may be slowing is itself good news – though it’s not slowing nearly enough. This can be seen in another number: The claim that OCFS took away 900 children in 2024. Two years ago, Maine took away 1,130 children.
So IF – and it’s a big if – that 900 figure is accurate, it would mean that Maine’s rate of removal fell from more than double the national average (even when rates of child poverty are factored in) to “only” about 70% above the national average. The state still is a long way from returning to the years when it came so close to getting child welfare right.
The reason for that big “if” has to do with the data sources. The 2022 figure is the most recent available from the federal government’s Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System. AFCARS gets the numbers from the states – but there are specific definitions for an entry into care. When states publish their own data for the public they can define an entry any way they want. Several times over the years I’ve found discrepancies between what states tell the public and what they tell AFCARS – and always, the number they give the public is lower.
I am not saying that is happening here. I suggest only that it would be prudent to ask OCFS if the 900 figure conforms strictly to AFCARS definitions and to check past OCFS self-reported entry data against past AFCARS reports. (The actual number reported to AFCARS won’t be identical, since AFCARS data are reported by federal fiscal year.) I tried doing that myself, but could not find entry figures on the OCFS website.
One other bit of clearly bad news: In a state that tears
apart so many families needlessly, it is outrageous that more children lose
their birth parents forever because of adoption than are allowed to return to
their own homes. This begs the question: Is OCFS getting the numbers down with
a mad rush to deprive children of their parents forever (that’s what
termination of parental rights really means) rather than by doing enough to
avoid needless removal?
