LEWISTON, Maine — A new facility is opening Wednesday in Lewiston. It will offer monitored family visitation for families in Maine with children in state custody.
The latest data shows there are more than 2,500 Maine children in DHHS custody, according to the state's child welfare dashboard. While in state custody, visitation appointments are one of the only ways for kids to maintain relationships with their parents and other family members.
The new facility opening this week, called Fair Shake, has contracts with DHHS to provide services. The facility will offer six rooms for children to have monitored family visitation. Each room has a camera mounted on the ceiling, allowing staff members to observe the appointments without having to sit with the parent and child.
"It's more natural for the children. You don't have somebody sitting in the room where the kid goes and plays with them instead of the parent or a teenager just not involving themselves because it's a weird person in the room they don't want to talk to," Wendy Hatch, a child protection attorney and co-founder of Fair Shake, said.
Hatch and her partner Wayne Doane, both child protection attorneys, opened their first Fair Shake facility in Newport in 2021 because, Hatch said, they saw opportunities to make visitation better for families.
Hatch said she believes Fair Shake is the only facility in New England that uses a camera system to monitor visits, where recordings can later be turned over to a judge in a family's case.
"When you actually can watch a visit, I think it really makes a difference for reunification, and having a judge actually see the parent-child interaction, that's huge. It gives a lot of emphasis for what's going on in the case," Hatch explained.
Maine has 22 family visitation sites across the state operated by four organizations in contract with the state's Office of Child and Family Services, according to DHHS spokesperson Lindsay Hammes.
"We hear all the time these parents going, 'I only get one hour or an hour-and-a-half visit with my kid, and it takes weeks to get it set up,'" Hatch said.
Hatch and Doane wanted to expand to Lewiston to help address the state's need for more facilities providing visitation. The new facility will also allow pets so children in state custody can reunite with their pets.