For the past 22 years, I’ve been working with four different gubernatorial administrations seeking ways to improve our child protective system. The state has struggled to create meaningful long-term policies to protect our children in state care as has been reported by our child welfare ombudsman for the past three years.

It’s against this backdrop that myself and others have founded Walk a Mile in Their Shoes, a nonprofit foundation created to prevent child abuse and deaths of children under state supervision. Walk a Mile is now launching an extensive live research effort, a process that will be gathering facts and solid advice from the very people who are fully aware of the specific problems children, parents and foster parents face daily – and know how these problems can be fixed.

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month; what better time to have started our new outreach program, the Save Maine Kids Statewide Listening Tour. As part of this effort, we will be traveling to all parts of our state, talking with those who work in the child protection system on a daily basis as direct care providers to children. No one knows the problems better than they do and, more importantly, they are in a position to offer solutions based on years of experience and expertise.

This is the first time such an extensive live research effort has ever been initiated in Maine on this topic. Our tour will extend to all counties of the state and to hundreds of foster parents, education officials, law enforcement agencies and other child care professionals, listening to their ideas about how to repair Maine’s failing system of child protection.

Unlike other efforts, this research will consist of much more than a few online Zoom meetings with select participants. As I see it, the problem up until now has been that no one has ever created a retaliation-free environment that encouraged child care providers to share their true thoughts and frustrations, to detail their challenges and be encouraged to offer solutions that could very well make a significant difference. The listening tour plans to do just that.

In fact, we’ve already started. The first community meeting was held on March 30 in Calais at the request of local officials who interact regularly with the Office of Child and Family Services. Washington County is often ignored and forgotten, especially regarding child care. We were excited to make the eight-hour round trip to listen and work with these dedicated people. We learned from the area’s child care providers about the serious system breakdowns currently happening within OCFS that are causing increasing frustration and leading to potential withdrawals from the system by some foster parents and educational officials.

We also learned there remains confidence and hope – even among the most frustrated providers – that those failures can still be repaired. It’s time we take advantage of their experience based on their devotion to the children they care for.

While some of the information we collect may be awkward for the bureaucracy, this is not an attempt to isolate or accuse anyone.

On the contrary, the purpose is to offer solutions that inspire change and open doors to new ideas and build trust in a system that hasn’t had a departmental reorganization since Gov. John Baldacci, who is a member of our board, made sweeping changes back in 2004.

Save Maine Kids Statewide Listening Tour has scheduled seven community meetings and events in April with many more to be scheduled throughout the spring, summer and fall. This unprecedented outreach will, for the first time, provide a listening ear to hundreds of child care providers and then document and publish the identified problems and frustrations. By basing solutions on years of experience, knowledge and the love of the children they care for, we can turn the tide on child protection.

For more information, visit walkamilemaine.org.