On July 26, 2019, Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services removed two boys from their parents’ care.

A few months later, during which time the father died, a court ruled that the mother had failed to “parent in a consistent and predictable manner” and did not have “safe or appropriate housing.” A judge agreed with DHHS that the mother had failed to “consistently meet the children’s medical needs,” according to a later court decision.

Those medical needs were substantial for the younger of her two sons. The boy was born premature with a genetic abnormality and was prone to seizures. He was unable to chew or swallow due to “impaired neurological functioning” and required a feeding tube to eat.

Under state and federal law, Maine’s Medicaid program, MaineCare, was supposed to pay for 24/7 private nursing for the child. But DHHS, which oversees both MaineCare and the state’s child protection services, never secured that care.

Instead, the agency moved to terminate her parental rights.

This January, four and a half years after the removal, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled the mother’s parental rights were unfairly terminated. The high court said the state could not terminate the parental rights of the mother – whom the court refers to as “Barni A.” due to confidentiality rules – based on her inability to care for her son without first providing her with the requisite medical care.

“The Department never provided the child with the services that he is entitled to receive, even though sufficient nursing care for the child may have enabled the mother to eliminate jeopardy and take responsibility for him,” the court wrote.

Julian Richter, president of the Maine Parental Rights Attorneys Association, called it “the most significant decision in the past few decades in Maine child protective law.”

“It finally acknowledges some of the deficits in services that exist in the state,” said Richter, who filed an amicus brief in the case. “I think going forward, courts have to look at whether or not the appropriate services were available to families. … They can’t just terminate parental rights because they didn’t provide services.”

A DHHS spokesperson declined to comment on the case, citing confidentiality laws.

Child protective cases are generally confidential, but because Maine Supreme Judicial Court decisions are public documents, Barni A.’s case provides a rare glimpse inside the opaque child welfare system.

Child welfare cases typically only enter the public sphere when they reach the criminal justice system, often because of horrific allegations of child abuse. These cases tend to generate criticism of DHHS for not doing enough to remove kids from their parents or caregivers before the violence.

The Barni A. case highlights a different problem: when parents are deprived of their rights and their children unnecessarily.

The most recent federal data shows Maine is investigating and removing children at a rate higher than the national average. It was one of just two states that increased the number of children it took into foster care between 2018 and 2022.

“Everyone in the child protective bar and the budget writers and decision-makers in the two other branches of government needs a reminder: Termination of parents’ and children’s right to be together is the last resort,” said Rory McNamara, the appellate attorney for Barni A., during oral argument before Maine’s high court.

“This case shows the state of Maine has lost sight of parents’ and children’s right to be together.”

QUESTIONS OF CARE

The court’s published decision provides little information about Barni A.’s youngest son or how the department came into contact with the family, and the legal briefs in the case are confidential. But the oral arguments offer some clues.

Hunter Umphrey, the assistant attorney general representing the department, told the court that when DHHS took Barni A.’s sons into custody in 2019, the younger child was 6 months old and weighed just 7 pounds.

The court record indicates that Barni A. worked hard to get her children back. She secured stable housing to accommodate the necessary medical equipment, participated in mental health services and attended the children’s medical appointments.

A counselor who treated Barni A. noted that any parent would be overwhelmed by what she faced: “a sick child, the death of her husband and an ongoing pandemic crisis.” As a result, the counselor said Barni A. “never had a full opportunity to learn the child’s medical needs and meet them,” according to the decision.

The youngest son was sent to a foster family after being removed from Barni A.’s care. The family’s mother provided “extraordinary care,” the court wrote. “The resource family can also care for and attend to the child at all hours.” The record seems to indicate the foster family had nursing support in the home, up to 60 hours a week, but not the 24/7 care the child was entitled to receive.

In March 2021, the state returned Barni A.’s older son to her for a trial home placement. It went well enough that, in late September, the department moved to dismiss the older boy from the case, and a judge agreed.

With one son back in her care, Barni A. may have started to hope she was on her way to getting the other child back, too.

But one week later, the department moved to terminate Barni A.’s parental rights to her youngest son.

‘SOMEBODY SHOULD HAVE DONE IT’

A year and a half passed before the matter went before a court.

During that time, Barni A. was supposed to have visitation rights with the boy, but the court record indicates those visits rarely occurred.

“Visitation time with the child was substantially limited throughout the case,” the court wrote. In multiple instances, many months passed between visits, but not because Barni A. wasn’t making an effort. Initially, visits were canceled due to the pandemic. Later they were canceled because the department could not find nurses to attend the visits, which typically occur at a third-party site.

Because of the confidential nature of the case, it’s unclear what arguments Barni A.’s attorney made during that time. But the record indicates the attorney never made the case that Barni A. needed the nursing care her child was entitled to before her rights could be terminated – this argument only arose when the case reached the high court.

In oral arguments, Umphrey, the assistant attorney general, argued that Barni A. would not have been able to parent the child regardless of the care provided, in part because “her cognition is very limited.”

(In its decision, the court noted that an initial evaluation “flagged concerns” about the mother’s cognitive function, but the department “never followed up to determine whether the mother has an intellectual disability.” If the department did make that determination, it would have been obligated to give the mother more help, not less, and “provide services to the mother to manage the child’s needs,” the court wrote.)

Umphrey argued that if Barni A. could have been a fit mother with the nursing care in place, “it would have come up at a family team meeting or a judicial review.” Umphrey noted that no one raised the issue over seven judicial reviews – then Justice Joseph Jabar cut him off.

“Somebody should have done it,” Jabar said. “The attorney should have done it, or the state should have done it under their reunification plan.”

As the court notes, DHHS does not provide nursing care itself but reimburses providers through MaineCare. However, “it is still the Department that sets the rates that directly impact service capacity, and it is still the Department that manages the system and arranges the provision of these services by other entities,” the court wrote.

It’s one of many services that DHHS has struggled to supply in recent years, despite being legally required to do so.

GAPS IN SERVICES

In June 2022, the Department of Justice concluded an investigation in Maine that found the state was failing to provide children’s behavioral health services in the community and at home.

Instead the state was unnecessarily putting children in psychiatric hospitals and residential treatment facilities. The children were “separated from their families and communities” in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Justice Department wrote in a letter to Gov. Janet Mills and Attorney General Aaron Frey.

The DOJ found that Maine had lengthy wait lists for behavioral health services, forcing families to “wait hundreds of days to receive services at home,” which meant they often turned to law enforcement and hospitals for help. Children with behavioral health needs were sent “to out-of-state residential facilities all over the country,” the Justice Department noted.

A DHHS spokesperson disagreed it was in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The agency has, however, implemented DOJ recommendations and taken steps to address the gaps in services, including using $20 million in state and federal funds to “to accelerate and intensify implementation of Maine’s comprehensive children’s behavioral health plan.”

“The Department is building upon initiatives launched under the Mills Administration to improve and expand the Children’s Behavioral Health Services continuum of care, with a focus on making appropriate services available to children with behavioral health needs in their communities,” DHHS spokesperson Lindsay Hammes wrote in an email.

When the DOJ announced its findings in June 2022, 753 children were waiting for home and community-based services, according to the DHHS children’s behavioral health data dashboard. That number declined to 509 by March 2024, the most recent month with available data.

The office in charge of children’s behavioral health needs was the Office of Child and Family Services, which also investigates child protection cases, initiates child removals and moves to terminate parental rights.

In January, DHHS announced a restructuring that moved children’s behavioral services into the Office of Behavioral Health.

DHHS is continuing negotiations with the Department of Justice. Maine is one of 21 states the department has found in violation of Olmstead v. L.C., a 1999 Supreme Court ruling that held that segregating disabled people in institutions violates the Americans with Disabilities Act because they have a right to live and receive services in their communities.

“As far as I know, there are no states that are managing the entire system appropriately,” said Diane Smith Howard of the National Disability Rights Network.

A SYSTEMWIDE FAILURE

Not only did DHHS never provide the services that Barni A.’s son was entitled to receive, the court record indicates the agency didn’t even try.

The department made “vague references” to staffing shortages related to the pandemic, but “there is nothing indicating that the Department made any attempt to secure 24/7 nursing care, or anything close to it, for the child,” the court wrote. “Inadequate resources do not excuse a state’s obligation to provide benefits under Medicaid.”

In February 2023, a three-day judicial review was held on the department’s petition to terminate Barni A.’s right to parent her younger son. On March 1, the court agreed with the department and ruled her unfit.

A litany of actors in the child welfare system failed to argue the state had to provide services before removal.

This indicates a systemwide failure, said Lauren Wille, legal director of Disability Rights Maine, which filed an amicus brief in the case.

“You’re talking about judges, guardians ad litem, the attorney general’s office, department caseworkers, all of these people and it doesn’t seem like anyone raised this as a problem,” Wille said. “It really signified for us the real need for education for all of those stakeholders when it comes to people, whether it’s parents or children, who have disabilities.”

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court’s decision is not the end of the road for Barni A. The high court sent the case back to the district court to reconsider the case in light of its ruling.

“We encourage the court, the mother, and the Department to explore alternatives to termination that do not put the child at risk but that recognize the Department’s obligation,” the court wrote.

For Jabar, the former Maine Supreme Judicial Court justice who authored the court’s decision, what’s striking about the case is that instead of attempting to secure nursing services for the child, the state infringed upon Barni A.’s constitutional rights.

“Before the constitutional right to parent is taken away, there are certain steps that have to be taken. And one of them is to provide services to the parent,” Jabar told The Maine Monitor.

“In some cases, parents are not able to take care of a child, even with medical services,” he added. “But in this case, the mother was never given a chance.”

This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from the Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.

Copy the Story Link

« Previous

ORONO — Coffee Hound Coffee Co. and the University of Maine have officially licensed a new co-branded coffee: the Maine Black Bears Nitro-Infused Caramel and Cream Coffee. This is the first and only officially licensed “ready to drink” nitro-infused coffee of the Maine Black Bears and is now available for purchase from Freshies at 12 Main Road in Milford. 

Roasted locally in the heart of Maine by Coffee Hound, a veteran-founded and woman-owned company in Brewer, this “ready to drink” coffee will soon be distributed statewide by Central Distributors, a Lewiston-based, family-owned distributor founded in 1934. 

“We are thrilled to be partners with the University of Maine to license and showcase this brand with our other ‘ready to drink’ nitro-infused coffee beverages that will be distributed throughout the state of Maine by Central Distributors,” said Jen Litteral, president of Coffee Hound. 

Coffee Hound has been mass producing their cold brew coffee line since 2019 in partnership with Geaghan’s Brewery, which distributes it in kegs and barrels. Coffee Hound now offers three flavor lines of nitro-infused coffee in cans: a traditional nitro with cream and sugar, a latte with maple syrup and cream and now the officially licensed Maine Black Bear coffee with a touch of caramel and cream. 

“We are very excited about the opportunity to add ‘Maine Black Bear’ nitro-infused ready-to-drink to our line-up of cold coffees at the Milford Freshies location. We are committed to delivering new and innovative food and drink options to our valued customers at our Freshies locations. We are privileged to support the University of Maine Black Bears and another local Maine business, Coffee Hound,” said Katie Foster, executive manager of operations for R.H. Foster Energy, LLC, which owns and operates Freshies where the coffee is now available. 

As Maine’s only public research university and a Carnegie R1 top-tier research institution, the University of Maine advances learning and discovery through excellence and innovation. Founded in 1865 in Orono, UMaine is the state’s land, sea and space grant university with a regional campus at the University of Maine at Machias. Our students come from all over the world and work with faculty conducting fieldwork around the globe — from the North Atlantic to the Antarctic. Located on Marsh Island in the homeland of the Penobscot Nation with UMaine Machias located in the homeland of the Passamaquoddy Nation, UMaine’s statewide mission is to foster an environment that creates tomorrow’s leaders. As the state’s flagship institution, UMaine offers nearly 200 degree programs through which students can earn bachelor’s, master’s, professional master’s and doctoral degrees as well as graduate certificates. For more information about UMaine and UMaine Machias, visit umaine.edu/about/quick-facts and machias.edu/about-umm/umm-facts. 

Established in 2013 we are veteran-founded and women-owned. Dedicated to Maine’s craftsmanship, we focus on sourcing from small farms around the world and roasting in small batches to create a craft coffee experience. Our roastery is located in Brewer and we produce coffee to over 300 locations in Maine including 17 Hannaford locations. We have three licensed cafe locations, two at Sunday River Ski Resort and one in Bar Harbor. We have been mass producing our cold brew coffee in partnership with Geaghan’s Brewery since 2019 which Geaghan’s distributes in kegs and barrels. And now with our co-packer Snapchill we have a line of 3 ‘ready to drink’ nitro-infused coffee drinks including the officially licensed Maine Black Bears caramel and cream. For more go www.coffeehoundcoffeeco.com.

Freshies is owned and operated by a locally owned, Maine-based business, R. H. Foster Energy, LLC. R. H. Foster is privileged to celebrate the third generation of Foster family members working in the business and to employ over 500 Mainers across the state. R. H. Foster owns and operates 23 Freshies® convenience stores and delis throughout northern, northeast, and central Maine, as well as Freshies Wood Fired Pizza truck, Tri-City Pizza, and Bangor Bakery Oven Bakery in Bangor. Additionally, the company has seven energy companies located in Hampden, Ellsworth, Machias, Lincoln, Penobscot, Dennysville, and Beals, that deliver heating fuels and provide services to residential customers and commercial companies. For more go www.freshiesdeli.com.

More articles from the BDN

Quadrant Capital Group LLC lifted its holdings in Cal-Maine Foods, Inc. (NASDAQ:CALM – Free Report) by 37.6% during the fourth quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 941 shares of the basic materials company’s stock after buying an additional 257 shares during the period. Quadrant Capital Group LLC’s holdings in Cal-Maine Foods were worth $54,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also bought and sold shares of the business. Exchange Traded Concepts LLC increased its position in Cal-Maine Foods by 6,480.5% in the fourth quarter. Exchange Traded Concepts LLC now owns 39,417 shares of the basic materials company’s stock worth $2,262,000 after buying an additional 38,818 shares during the last quarter. International Assets Investment Management LLC lifted its stake in shares of Cal-Maine Foods by 2,543.8% during the 4th quarter. International Assets Investment Management LLC now owns 117,650 shares of the basic materials company’s stock valued at $67,520,000 after buying an additional 113,200 shares in the last quarter. Citigroup Inc. grew its stake in Cal-Maine Foods by 26.2% in the 3rd quarter. Citigroup Inc. now owns 42,829 shares of the basic materials company’s stock valued at $2,074,000 after buying an additional 8,898 shares in the last quarter. Toroso Investments LLC raised its holdings in Cal-Maine Foods by 227.5% during the 3rd quarter. Toroso Investments LLC now owns 41,724 shares of the basic materials company’s stock valued at $2,020,000 after acquiring an additional 28,983 shares during the period. Finally, QRG Capital Management Inc. purchased a new stake in shares of Cal-Maine Foods during the third quarter worth $1,533,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 84.67% of the company’s stock.

Cal-Maine Foods Price Performance

NASDAQ CALM opened at $60.35 on Monday. Cal-Maine Foods, Inc. has a 1 year low of $42.25 and a 1 year high of $64.76. The company’s 50 day simple moving average is $59.37 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $56.15. The stock has a market capitalization of $2.96 billion, a PE ratio of 10.70 and a beta of -0.02.

Cal-Maine Foods (NASDAQ:CALM – Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, April 2nd. The basic materials company reported $3.00 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.45 by $0.55. The firm had revenue of $703.08 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $692.35 million. Cal-Maine Foods had a return on equity of 16.79% and a net margin of 11.61%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was down 29.5% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the business earned $6.62 EPS. On average, research analysts anticipate that Cal-Maine Foods, Inc. will post 4.51 EPS for the current year.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Separately, Stephens reissued an “equal weight” rating and set a $65.00 price objective on shares of Cal-Maine Foods in a report on Wednesday, April 3rd.

Read Our Latest Report on Cal-Maine Foods

About Cal-Maine Foods

(Free Report)

Cal-Maine Foods, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, produces, grades, packages, markets, and distributes shell eggs. The company offers specialty shell eggs, such as nutritionally enhanced, cage free, organic, free-range, pasture-raised, and brown eggs under the Egg-Land’s Best, Land O’ Lakes, Farmhouse Eggs, Sunups, Sunny Meadow, and 4Grain brand names.

Further Reading

Receive News & Ratings for Cal-Maine Foods Daily – Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts’ ratings for Cal-Maine Foods and related companies with MarketBeat.com’s FREE daily email newsletter.