This month, Maine Monitor government accountability reporter Josh Keefe takes listeners behind the scenes of his recent reporting on Maine’s child welfare system, including the story of one Maine woman’s fight to get her son back after an incident in a Presque Isle parking lot.
Mica Adler’s fight to get her son back offers a rare glimpse inside the state’s secretive child welfare system. Her combined criminal and child protection cases illuminate the power the state can bring to bear on families, the tough calls child protection workers must make with imperfect information, the hurdles parents must overcome to win their children back, and the blurry line between unconventional parenting and child maltreatment.
The most recent federal data shows Maine has become an outlier in the United States. Between 2019 and 2023, the national foster care population fell by nearly 20 percent as most states embraced ways to keep families intact. Maine’s foster care population increased 17 percent over that same period, more than any state. In 2023, Maine took children into foster care at a rate nearly double the national average.
Many lawyers and advocates working in child welfare argue Maine is investigating too many parents, removing too many children, and breaking apart too many families in an effort to prevent the next death. They argue that these efforts overload the system, making children less safe.
You can listen to the episode here. Tune in to listen live the first Thursday of every month at 4 p.m. on WERU 89.9 FM.
