Report Materials
Why OIG Did This Audit
- Abuse and neglect against a child by a parent, caregiver, or another person can have a long-term impact on the child’s health, opportunity, and well-being. Abuse can be physical, sexual, or emotional in nature. Neglect is a failure to meet the child’s basic needs, such as housing, food, clothing, education, and access to medical care.
- This audit is part of a series that examines States’ compliance with the requirements of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act for the immediate screening, risk and safety assessment, and investigation of reports of child abuse and neglect. Based on our risk assessment and a report by Maine’s Child Welfare Ombudsman that identified substantial issues where there was a deviation from best practices or adherence to policy or both that had a material effect on the safety and best interests of the children, or rights of the parents, we selected Maine for our first audit.
What OIG Found
On the basis of our sample results, we estimated that 94 percent of child abuse and neglect reports reviewed were not in compliance with 1 or more requirements related to immediate screening, risk and safety assessment, and investigation.
What OIG Recommends
We made five recommendations, including that Maine provide additional training to caseworkers and supervisors to achieve compliance with requirements and develop additional written policies and procedures. The full recommendations are in the report.
Maine concurred with all of our recommendations.
25-A-01-009.01 to ACF - Open Unimplemented
Update expected on
05/06/2025
We recommend that the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Child and Family Services provide additional training to caseworkers and supervisors as appropriate, to achieve compliance with requirements for the immediate screening, risk and safety assessment, and investigation of reports of child abuse and neglect.
25-A-01-009.02 to ACF - Open Unimplemented
Update expected on
05/06/2025
We recommend that the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Child and Family Services develop written policies and procedures that require its supervisors to review and approve documentation of caseworker interviews with children and adults.
25-A-01-009.03 to ACF - Open Unimplemented
Update expected on
05/06/2025
We recommend that the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Child and Family Services develop written policies and procedures that require its supervisors to monitor aging reports on a weekly basis to promptly identify delays in the investigation process.
25-A-01-009.04 to ACF - Open Unimplemented
Update expected on
05/06/2025
We recommend that the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Child and Family Services develop written policies and procedures that outline the steps a caseworker must take to override a report from screened-out to screened-in and manually input a response time.
25-A-01-009.05 to ACF - Open Unimplemented
Update expected on
05/06/2025
We recommend that the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Child and Family Services develop written policies and procedures that requires supporting documentation to be maintained within Katahdin to demonstrate that written notification letters were sent.
View in Recommendation Tracker
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Notice
This report may be subject to section 5274 of the National Defense Authorization Act Fiscal Year 2023, 117 Pub. L. 263.