A Maine child advocate is pushing back after Governor Janet Mills released a statement expressing confidence in child welfare office Director Bobbi Johnson.

A red flag was raised Friday when 145 employees signed a letter of no confidence in Johnson.

Former state Senator and Walk a Mile in Their Shoes founder Bill Diamond says there won’t be pressure on Mills to address their concerns until there’s more critical reporting from the media.

“The only story you saw Saturday was the fact that the Republicans in the legislature were going to be demanding change,” said Diamond. “But even that, I mean, that’s going to wear thin.”

Diamond told the WGAN Morning News the dire situation faced by frontline workers includes physical assaults, unsafe working conditions, and the responsibility of staying in hotels with children in state custody.

He said there’s deep-seated issues within the bureaucracy and the lack of response from the governor and commissioner. Case workers are highly concerned about housing children in state custody in hotels, which is a practice the agency is supposed to be eliminating.

Diamond said the agency – the Office of Child and Family Services, which is under the state Department of Health and Human Services – is responsible for getting kids out of dire situations but is failing to adequately take care of them and putting case workers in untenable situations.

“They’re in homes where they are being abused,” Diamond said “They’re in homes that they’re not being fed properly. And so now what the department has done when they take them out of those these homes, then they put them in hotels. And so, the very case workers that are working with these kids now are responsible to staying in a hotel with a kid overnight, and who knows for how long that is, and they, they keep assigning people to go to the hotels and watch these kids.”

The number of children in state custody has increased by 800 over the last six years.

Diamond did point out that he’s encouraged by increased awareness of problems under Johnson, both by the public and state lawmakers.

“The kind of calls we get at our foundation, the kind of people who are outraged, is growing,” said Diamond. “Those numbers are growing. And now we’re noticing that legislators for this new session are talking about how this is an issue they want to deal with. So, we’ll see.”

He urged the public to contact their legislators and demand action to address the issues within the Office of Child and Family Services.

The next session of the state legislature convenes early next month.