A federal audit of Maine’s response to reports of child abuse and neglect found that in 94% of cases, the state did not meet the requirements.

The audit looked at reports from two to three years ago, but it’s still a harsh criticism of a child welfare system that has been in the news a lot lately because of the deaths of several children.

Maine was named by the Office of the Inspector General as one of the five states most likely to have child abuse or neglect problems.

It looked at 100 cases from the fall of 2021 to 2022 and found that Maine almost always didn’t follow at least one rule when responding to reports of child abuse and neglect.

Not meeting these requirements includes not finishing safety checks and investigations by the due dates. Some were more than a hundred days late.

Assistant Regional Inspector General for Audit Services Tammy Leveque said those due dates are important because the information is used to make sure children are safe.

Leveque said, “Maine and every other state can’t be sure that their children are safe if these processes aren’t properly supervised.”

The audit suggests that Maine write down its policies and procedures and give caseworkers and supervisors more training. It wants a report on how things are going in six months.

Lindsay Hammes, a spokesperson for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, said that the department agrees that policy and practice have not always been the same. According to her, the cases looked at happened two to three years ago.

The suggestions “reflect many of the important steps OCFS [Office of Child and Family Services] has already taken, or is in the process of implementing, to improve our system of screening, investigating, and responding to reports of alleged abuse and/or neglect,” she said.

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