Families being investigated by child welfare workers need legal help before a case ends up in court, advocates for victims of domestic violence told a legislative panel Monday.

Otherwise, victims might hesitate to call for help, Erika Simonson, child and family programs coordinator at the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence, said.

“If the survivor parent who lost her children were here today, you would hear from her, as I did, ‘I should have stayed. If I had known leaving and filing for divorce would result in me losing my children, before I lost everything else, I would have stayed,’” Simonson told a commission studying whether the state should give legal help to families in the child protection system earlier than it does now.

Currently, the state gives poor parents a state-funded attorney if the Department of Health and Human Services begins court proceedings to remove a child from a home. But advocates like Simonson say families should have a lawyer much sooner in the process, possibly when the department opens an investigation.

Those investigations are typically in response to a report of suspected abuse or neglect. Attorneys say parents sometimes answer questions at the beginning of an investigation before they have been advised of their legal rights.

The commission, which has until early November to come up with a recommendation, solicited public comment on Monday and received feedback from domestic violence victim advocates and from attorneys who represent parents.

Attorney Matthew Pagnozzi of Brewer wrote to the committee to say many times parents don’t understand their legal rights when they are speaking with a case worker.

Many of them are poor,  Pagnozzi said, and have “limited education levels.”

“There can be no doubt in my experience that the clients I represent are far less likely to know their rights prior to a court appointed attorney, and even if they are aware, they are not financially able to engage representation until the department files a petition,” Pagnozzi wrote.

According to an annual report on Maine’s child welfare system, there were 2,251 children in state custody in October 2021, a decline of 106 from the previous year. 

And in 2020, substance use was a risk factor in 50% of the cases in which a child was removed from a home, which is 11% higher than the national average.

The state’s child welfare system has been under investigation in recent years following the deaths of four children in the summer of 2021. Last month, a legislative oversight panel voted to subpoena the records related to the four child deaths in hopes of finding out why the deaths occurred.

In all four cases, the parents have been charged with murder or manslaughter. All of the children were age 3 or younger.

When it comes to legal help for parents under investigation, attorney Sean Leonard of Presque Isle said he thinks a pilot program offering early legal advice should be launched in Lewiston, Augusta, Bangor and Portland.

“This is because of the high rate of economically disadvantaged families and the population being concentrated,” he wrote.

Through These Doors, a domestic violence resource center serving Cumberland County, sometimes helps victims with legal bills, said Aurelia Blackstock, a child protection services system advocate.

She recalled one client who needed help moving out of an abusive home, opening her own bank account and finding work after being a stay-at-home mother. All those needs were in addition to dealing with a child protective investigation.

Eventually, the woman was able to provide a safe, stable home for her children.

“If she didn’t have that legal advocacy, it would have been a much different case,” Blackstock said.