Maine’s foster care population grew at a higher rate than any other state between 2019 and 2023, new federal data shows.
It was one of just six states that increased its foster care population during that five-year period, according to a Maine Monitor analysis of data from the federal Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS).
AFCARS published data for fiscal year 2023, the most recent year for which data is available, in May, showing that Maine removed children from their families because of abuse and neglect at one of the highest rates in the country.
In 2023, Maine was more likely to remove children than all but five other states: West Virginia, Alaska, Montana, Kentucky and South Dakota. That year, Maine removed 4.14 children per 1,000 living in the state, about 75 percent higher than the national rate of 2.4 children per 1,000.
While Maine’s foster care population increased 17 percent between 2019 and 2023, the most in the nation, the national foster care population fell nearly 20 percent.
More recent data from Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services, however, shows the state foster care population has declined since reaching a 20-year high last fall.
Maine’s child welfare system includes DHHS, the Attorney General’s office, which represents the department in court, the attorneys who represent parents and the judges who preside over child protection cases.
Within DHHS, the Office of Child and Family Services (OFCS) oversees child protective cases and the removal of children. In an interview, OFCS Director Bobbi Johnson said the growth of Maine’s foster care population was due in part to higher than average rates of cases involving substance abuse, a lack of attorneys to represent parents and a dearth of behavioral and mental health support services, which has “resulted in a lack of reunification services.”
Johnson, who became the office’s director in early 2024, also attributed the increase to several highly publicized deaths of children known to DHHS in late 2017 and early 2018. Those tragic deaths prompted legislative changes and policy shifts, as well as an increase in reports to the department.
The phenomenon is not unique to Maine. Research has suggested media coverage of child deaths can prompt increases in the number of children entering foster care and decreases in the number adopted or reunited with their families, as caseworkers take a “better safe than sorry” approach.
Johnson said the department is working with organizations that study the science of children’s safety as it adjusts its approach to be less “reactive.”
She expressed a desire to improve the system and staff knowledge instead of “saying the system is not working effectively and everything needs to be changed, which I think tends to be what you see in jurisdictions where there are child fatalities.”
Some still see an issue, however.
“We continue to be in a place in our state where we are almost solely focused on these tragedies and criticism of the child welfare agency’s response; that has an impact on decision-making at many levels, which can lead to more kids coming into care,” Melissa Hackett, a policy associate with the Maine Children’s Alliance, said in an email.
Poverty vs. neglect
The federal data shows that two-thirds of the children Maine put in foster care in 2023 were placed there because of neglect, which is higher than the national average.
In recent years, there has been a growing consensus nationwide that in many cases, removing children from homes can result in more long-term harm than leaving them there and connecting families with services, such as mental health and substance use treatment, behavioral supports and financial resources. This movement is linked to the idea that child welfare agencies often accuse parents of neglect when the root issue is poverty, and could be addressed by putting supports in place rather than removing a child.
Earlier this week, Governor Janet Mills signed legislation into law that changed the state’s definition of child neglect, creating an exception for parents who can’t provide necessities because they are unable to afford them. More than half of U.S. states have adopted similar statutes. The department supported the change.
But some lawmakers and advocates in Augusta argued that the bill didn’t go far enough. They argue the state is unnecessarily separating families and paying for foster care, lawyers and court time instead of addressing the symptoms of poverty. They argue the state is opening too many cases, making it harder to identify those that are particularly dangerous.
“The system we have now is not designed to effectively keep children safe,” Alica Rea from the Maine ACLU testified before a legislative committee in April. “Instead, the system puts parents, especially single mothers, in the impossible situation of having to overcome poverty in order to stop being monitored and to reunite with their children, without providing them with the resources necessary to do so.”
Not everyone shares this perspective. According to Maine’s child welfare ombudsman, the state is not removing children from homes quickly enough.
“Since 2019, the trends that my office has seen do not show that the Department is taking too many children into state custody,” Christine Alberi wrote in an email. “The Department has often delayed taking children into custody too long after multiple investigations or safety plans.”
Alberi said the department’s reaction after 2018 included “a much higher level of risk aversion” that was “not a model for child welfare practice.”
This included reinvestigating cases sent to the Alternative Response Program (which is often where low severity cases are referred) and ending out-of-home safety planning, which resulted in more children entering custody, Alberi said.
“Many changes were needed but instead of refocusing on proper practice, the Department did too much too quickly,” Alberi wrote.
Declining numbers
Data suggests Maine’s foster care surge may be receding.
The number of children entering state custody increased from 820 to 1,246 between 2017 and 2019, a 50 percent rise. But in the next five years, entries into the system fell 15 percent to 1,054 in 2023.
Despite the lower level of children entering the system, the overall foster care population continued to grow until well into 2024, as the number of children exiting the system, due to adoption or reunification with parents, was lower than the number of children entering.
While federal data is lagging, Maine’s child welfare dashboard has more current numbers. They show that the foster care population continued to increase from 2023 to 2024. In July, the number of children in state care hit a 20-year high of 2,579.
But that total has been declining since, dropping to 2,290 in April.
Johnson sees the decline as “a positive movement.”
She attributed the decline to more adoptions (Maine has a higher rate of children leaving the system through adoption than the national average) and efforts to identify barriers to either adoption or reunification. She also credited investments in the state’s behavioral health system, which allow families to get help before removal is needed, Johnson said.
“Building out the infrastructure of prevention within our state is really critical,” she said.
TURNER, Maine (WGME) — The Maine Human Rights Commission is adding a sixth school district to their lawsuit over transgender policies in schools across the state, that’s according to our media partners at the Sun Journal.
Earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at keeping transgender athletes out of girls’ sports, arguing it protects fair opportunities under Title IX.
In a board meeting on Thursday, MSAD 52 voted to align Trump’s polices with the district.
Shortly after, the district was added to the list of schools being sued.
“I think it comes to a point where it goes against the state, but we gotta do what’s right. And I think it’s right to support female athletes,” Board Chair Peter Ricker said. “I think there are potential lawsuits regardless on the issue until the state makes up their mind and until the feds make up their mind.”
The board voted 5-4 in favor of passing a policy to keep transgender athletes out of girls sports.
Evan Ipsaro scored 24 points to lift Miami of Ohio to a 93-61 win over the University of Maine in a non-conference men’s basketball game on Saturday in Oxford, Ohio.
Keelan Steel scored 14 points for Maine, which has lost 11 straight games to start the season. The Black Bears trailed 28-6 just over 10 minutes into the first half.
Eian Elmer added 16 points and six rebounds for the RedHawks (8-0).
Sara Bronin is the founder of the National Zoning Atlas, a George Washington University law professor and author of “Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World.”
Over the last few years, the nonprofit National Zoning Atlas team has set out to map every zoning code in America to do one simple thing: let the public see how their communities regulate land. We developed this goal because zoning rules can have big impacts: they dictate to property owners what they can do with their properties.
Before we started work in Maine last spring, we would have never guessed that Maine’s codes would be the most bureaucratic and convoluted of the 30-plus states we’ve worked. We thought that Maine’s relatively small population and few urban centers — not to mention its proud commitment to property rights and personal freedom — would mean the codes would be short and straightforward.
We couldn’t have been more wrong.
We can say authoritatively that Maine’s zoning is far out of the norm because we’ve analyzed zoning conditions in nearly 9,000 cities, towns and counties across America, and we’ve read over a million pages of zoning codes. We’ve become experts in analyzing the arcana of minimum lot sizes, setbacks, height caps and parking mandates.
In Maine, we started first in Washington County. More recently, through a partnership with GrowSmart Maine, we’ve completed analysis of zoning in and around Portland.
Well, mostly completed. Of the 123 jurisdictions we have reviewed so far (of Maine’s 496 total with zoning authority), 17 never provided a full copy of their zoning text, map or both.
The texts we could find — totaling 17,500 pages — revealed that Maine appears to have some of the longest zoning codes in the country. New Hampshire, with roughly the same population, has half the number of jurisdictions exercising zoning, and zoning codes half as long as Maine’s.
And when we located maps, some existed only as grainy, pixelated PDFs with faded lines and unclear boundaries. Others existed only in paper copy, not online.
What’s worse, Maine piles “shoreland zoning” on top of zoning. Shoreland zoning was created to protect water quality, but it’s hard to see how it achieves this goal. Zoning maps and shoreland zoning maps often conflict or don’t match up, and too often codes refer to outdated or inconsistent data about wetlands and watercourses. Even analysts who had handled notoriously complicated coastal zoning in California struggled to make sense of Maine’s regime.
When we had questions about interpreting texts and maps, we often had nowhere to turn. That’s because many of the 123 jurisdictions were very small towns, with part-time staff, or no staff at all. If our trained analysts cannot make sense of the rules, and no one’s on the other end of the line, it’s unrealistic to expect homeowners, builders or neighbors to do so. We imagine that many well-intentioned local officials feel caught administering systems that no one fully understands.
State legislators have taken action on zoning — primarily to promote more housing. They recently expanded opportunities for multifamily housing and made it easier to build accessory dwelling units. These are laudable and necessary reforms. Our analysis so far shows that only 15% of residential land allows multi-family housing by right, and more than half of single-family land bans accessory dwellings.
But legislators have not tackled a more fundamental need exposed by our Maine Zoning Atlas: to simplify and clarify the state’s land use regulatory framework. Property owners and policymakers alike experience zoning as a maze, where they must navigate missing information, conflicting requirements and procedural runaround.
To provide a way out, next legislative session, state lawmakers should consider requiring zoning codes to be available to the public online. Or requiring maps to be legible, with shoreland zoning clearly mapped. How can people be bound by rules they cannot find, or understand?
Legislators should also consider legalizing — and providing incentives for — local governments to share resources in land use administration. Small towns might be more empowered to achieve their land use goals if they have the tools and manpower they need to interpret and enforce their own zoning codes. Legislators might also rethink shoreland zoning altogether.
I’d like to say our nonprofit is eager to find funding to finish our analysis in Maine. But honestly, it’s been a bit of a nightmare.
For the sake of our team — and anyone else trying to make sense of zoning in Maine — I urge people in power to take action to streamline the state’s regulatory framework. There’s just no reason Maine’s land use rules should be the most complicated in the country.
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