Senator Craig Hickman introduces bill to exclude poverty as a factor when determining instances of willful neglect or abuse of a child
AUGUSTA — On Tuesday, April 8, Senator Craig Hickman, D-Winthrop, introduced a bipartisan bill to exclude poverty as a factor when determining instances of willful neglect or abuse of a child. This bill seeks to improve outcomes in Maine’s child welfare system by ensuring poverty is not a factor used in deciding to separate children from their families. LD 891, “An Act to Exclude Poverty as a Factor When Determining Instances of Willful Neglect or Abuse of a Child,” was the subject of a public hearing before the Joint Standing Committee on Health and Human Services.
“With our current child welfare system, we are not only failing to protect Maine children; we are failing to protect Maine’s most vulnerable families,” said Sen. Hickman. “State statutes fail to appropriately define neglect and often conflate it with poverty. This ambiguous definition of neglect subjects parents and caregivers to investigations that mandate surveillance and oversight merely for being poor. LD 891 presents a reform to the child welfare system that better protects Maine children and families.”
LD 891 would exclude poverty as a basis for making abuse findings against families or caregivers. It also would require that emotional injury to the children be concrete and based on a clinical diagnosis. The bill further asks that the Department of Health and Human Services disclose the specific efforts it makes to prevent the removal of a child from a home and the outcomes when a child is separated from their family. LD 891 builds on work from the federal “Supporting America’s Children and Families Act,” which recognized the negative impact of using poverty as a factor in separation, and was signed into law earlier this year with bipartisan support.
In her testimony in support of this bill, Mary Callahan, a long-term home health nurse and former foster parent, said, “Over a ten-year period, I had ten kids that stayed with me for any significant length of time, months or years. When I read LD 891, I gasped, because it would have changed everything for so many of my kids. Adding ‘willful’ in front of ‘deprivation’ changes everything because most of my kids were only removed because of poverty.”
LD 891 faces further action in the Health and Human Services Committee.
Sen. Hickman represents District 14, which includes Chelsea, Farmingdale, Gardiner, Hallowell, Manchester, Monmouth, Pittston, Randolph, Readfield, Wayne, West Gardiner and Winthrop in Kennebec County.
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