Maine's handling of child welfare cases made incremental improvement last year, according to ombudsman Christine Alberi.
Alberi told members of the legislature's Health and Human Services Committee Thursday that 47% of cases reviewed by her office had issues with a detrimental effect on the safety of children or the rights of parents.
While that failure rate is still high, Alberi said it marked the first time in five years that it was below 50%.
The new report comes amid ongoing scrutiny of how the state monitors children under its supervision. Recent child deaths have prompted another bill by state lawmakers to create a dedicated child welfare agency that operates separately from DHHS.
Alberi said consolidating child services is intriguing, but "I do worry right now that if we did that some of this progress would be derailed."
She said case workers at the Office of Child and Family Services are still lacking resources and that improvement was uneven across the state's regional offices. However, she said interagency cooperation and practices had improved.
According to state data, roughly 30 Maine children died each year between 2021 and 2024, including some supervised by the state's welfare system.
Maine has among the lowest child deaths per capita, according to the KIDS Count Data Center.
