ME LD1544

Eliminates prior involuntary termination of parental rights to another child as an aggravating factor in child protection cases

Requires courts to consider the trauma to a child of removal from their home when deciding whether to grant preliminary protection orders

Mandates that the Department of Health and Human Services demonstrate it exhausted options to mitigate immediate risk of serious harm before removing a child from the home

Requires requests for preliminary protection orders to include detailed summaries of how DHHS weighed removal trauma against risk of harm and what services were offered to prevent removal

Before terminating parental rights, courts must explicitly find that DHHS fulfilled its statutory obligations to provide reasonable efforts to rehabilitate and reunify the parent and child