145 workers in Maine DHHS Office of Child and Family Services (OCFS) sign letter of no confidence in OCFS Director Bobbi Johnson

The workers cited Johnson’s failure to acknowledge or address critical safety issues relating to hoteling children in state custody, her unilateral changes in how 24/7 care is staffed for children being housed in hotels, and a continuing pattern of Maine DHHS management ignoring staff concerns under her directorship.

One-hundred forty five caseworkers, community care workers and case aides employed in the Office of Child and Family Services (OCFS) within the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) have signed a letter of no confidence in OCFS Director Bobbi Johnson.

In their letter, the workers cited Johnson’s failure to acknowledge or address critical safety issues relating to hoteling children in state custody. They also cited her unilateral changes in how 24/7 care is staffed for children being housed in hotels, and a continuing pattern of Maine DHHS management ignoring staff concerns under her directorship. Johnson, a 28-year employee of Maine DHHS, became OCFS director in January 2024.

“Director Bobbi Johnson has actively demonstrated that she is unable to ensure the well-being and safety of children and OCFS staff by refusing to address the housing of children in hotels,” the workers wrote in their letter of no confidence in Johnson. “First and foremost, holding children in hotels or emergency rooms only increases the trauma for children. The Director’s inaction in finding an alternate to the warehousing of children in hotels or emergency rooms lends to the perception by many frontline workers that those in Central Office are reinforcing the misconception that hotels and emergency rooms are the only options for housing children. The focus on scheduling and costs associated with warehousing children in hotel and emergency rooms belies the actual needs of the children.”

The letter of no confidence lists seven issues that workers say they have raised repeatedly in meetings with Johnson with no resolution whatsoever. The workers’ concerns come as 2,507 children were in state custody as of September 2024, the most recent data on the state’s Child Welfare Data Dashboard. For comparison, there were 1,724 children in state custody in July 2018.

The issues raised by the workers in their letter of no confidence in Johnson:

• Aggressive children have assaulted staff in hotel rooms;
• A directive that staff should address safety concerns by calling local law enforcement;
• The lack of staff training to safely restrain dysregulated minors, something staff don’t want to have to do in the first place;
• Staff being mandated to cover hotel shifts and then having to immediately go to court hearings, causing concern that staff don’t have adequate prep time for court hearings on those timelines;
• Staff being mandated to cover multiple shifts within 24-36 hours despite the issue of driving while fatigued, including the transportation of youths in state custody;
• Staff not being certified to administer medications, and concerns about medications that aren’t secured in locked boxes;
• Staff concern that as a result of mandated long hours, that vital information won’t be documented in their cases and that critical deadlines will be missed.

“All of the above concerns have been raised in meetings with Director Johnson and the significance of these concerns have been dismissed as a failure on the frontline staff to adapt to the demands of the work,” the letter of no confidence in Johnson states. “Director Johnson consistently demonstrates a blatant failure to listen to the concerns of the frontline OCFS staff prior to or even post-implementation of policies and procedures, jeopardizing Maine’s vulnerable citizens and the OCFS staff who serve them.”

The letter concludes, “For these reasons, we have no confidence in Director Johnson’s ability to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Child and Family Services. We call on Commissioner Gagne-Holmes and Governor Janet Mills to replace Director Johnson immediately. Furthermore, we call on Commissioner Gagne-Holmes and Governor Janet Mills to move beyond platitudes by working with the Legislature and frontline OCFS workers in developing alternatives to warehousing children in emergency rooms and hotels.”

In addition, this morning MSEA filed a workplace complaint with the Maine Department of Labor regarding the Office of Child and Family Services’ practice of requiring workers to stay overnight in hotels with minors in state custody. This practice has resulted in at least 10 child protective workers being violently assaulted by minors over the past several years.

The hoteling of children in state custody is a problem that has been worsening as the number of children in state custody has increased. Many children being housed in hotels under the supervision of Maine DHHS workers don’t have foster care as an option due to their mental health or behavioral histories. As such, Maine DHHS caseworkers, community care workers and case aides are required to team up in pairs in a hotel with a child in state custody and serve as their caregivers – often with little if any notice. This hoteling is in addition to the workers’ regularly assigned job duties.

For the children being housed in hotels, the Maine DHHS workers are responsible to provide for their daily needs, including: all meals; medication regimens; transportation to and from school and any extracurricular activities; hygiene; medical or other appointments such as counseling; recreational opportunities; clothing; and bedtime.

“OCFS frontline staff fully understand overtime is a necessity in a child protective position,” the workers wrote in their letter of no confidence in Johnson. “The objection we raise to these unilateral statewide changes is the inevitable decrease in our ability to reliably plan social time or make commitments to anyone outside of our employer. This should not be expected of any worker, particularly ones who have chosen to work in this difficult field. We should all have significant periods of non-scheduled work time that are free of the looming possibility of being mandated to work overtime.”

Over the years, including earlier this year, frontline workers at Maine DHHS have repeatedly expressed their concerns not just to Maine DHHS management in meetings and letters but also to the Maine Legislature, in testimony before legislative committees, about the failure of Maine DHHS management to listen to them about the understaffing and impossible caseloads that they’ve been enduring.

On July 12, 2024, twenty-seven caseworkers, comprising a supermajority of the caseworkers at the Office of Child and Family Services’ Central Intake Unit, wrote a letter to Johnson and then-acting Commissioner Sara Gagne-Holmes criticizing what the workers described as “unilateral changes coming from the leadership of OCFS.”

“Director Johnson’s stated intention is to lead our office with transparency, collaboration and respect for frontline workers,” the 27 caseworkers wrote on July 12. “We must sound the alarm that the current actions of the Central Office do not match these sentiments. We are a competent, learned, seasoned workforce that strives to be part of the solution to our very ailing system. Do not continue to shut us out. Do not continue with these unilateral changes that will cause harm to your workforce. The children and families of Maine deserve better, and they do not have time to wait.”

The 27 workers in their letter dated July 12 asked OCFS leadership to halt the implementation of the unilaterally created intake schedules that had been scheduled to take effect July 28, but that were later implemented on Nov. 1, 2024. As noted in their letter and in the letter of no confidence in Johnson, workers at Maine DHHS are calling on OCFS leadership to restore the intake schedules that were in place as of June 30, 2024. “The (unilateral) changes will further exhaust an already exhausted state workforce,” the workers wrote. “The results are obvious: a rippling effect throughout our entire system, decreasing the efficiency and effectiveness of our child protective system statewide.”

The workers in their July 12 letter requested a response to their requests within 72 hours; no direct response was ever provided to them.

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The Maine Service Employees Association, Local 1989 of the Service Employees International Union, represents over 13,000 Maine workers and retired workers, including the workers at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.