Change is Good at Maine DHHS

I heard of the “Purge” at Maine Department of Human Services today.  Some very long-term department heads were fired.  They were held accountable for the current malaise in the mission of the department and the current financial crisis in service delivery

 It was sad and invigorating at the same time. Sad, because I’ve been working in community social services long enough to remember when we were all working together toward the same goals.   The  ”system” was a collaboration of cooperation to make disadvantaged people’s lives better between state and community service providers.  The thought of removing people for political reasons was unheard of.  Back than, you were good, and effective at improving disadvantaged people’s lives or you did something else for a living or were encouraged to do something else by a perceptive and dedicated supervisor.  

The beauracracy has become obese and lost its way.  Too many people stayed in the field for the wrong reasons.  This includes community providers, as well as the state employee side of social services.  It became more about maintenance than development.  It became more about jobs security for the providers than providing services to the people with disadvantages. 

The bottom line is it became a competition for money between the providers and the people in need and the people in need didn’t even have a voice in the discussion.  As time passed, the bureaucrats were the holders of the purse strings and given unsupervised reign of how funds would be spent.   As a result, some community services were frivolously devalued in an effort to cut state financial support. These cuts weren’t  based on the merit of community services and practical reality but rather the cuts were  decided by elitist philosophy .

Well,  the “Purge”  is also invigorating because those who felt dedicated to the services of collaboration of cooperation and were devalued by the those in charge have renewed hope that differences of philosophy can exist and create a hybrid of services that really support people with real disadvantages.

The “Purge” was necessary because the “system” lost its purpose.   It was a bold move by the LePage administration.  I wish them well in this upheaval and hope they don’t lose their purpose in the politics.

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