The governor said he’ll be asking for more money for staff training, money to upgrade the agency’s systems and a better way to evaluate workers so they don’t burn out and leave.

“Look, it’s not a perfect system, but we are working at it,” LePage said late Monday morning following an event at the International Marine Terminal in Portland.

Several child protective caseworkers spoke to the Maine Sunday Telegram for a story that ran on Sunday about widespread problems within their agency that date back to last year, before the high-profile deaths of two young girls. The workers described a system plagued by inefficiency, mismanagement, unmanageable caseloads and constantly shifting expectations. They said that, despite efforts to improve, problems have only worsened in recent weeks as the administration has faced public and political pressure to act.

Mostly, though, workers said they felt their voices weren’t being heard.

Asked to respond to that criticism, LePage said, “I’ll tell you, we’ve certainly been listening to them lately.”

“I mean, I am all over it. I’ve been talking to everybody. I have (Department of Health and Human Service Commissioner) Ricker Hamilton going to each office. “So if they weren’t being heard before; they’re being heard now.”

LePage said the legislation his office is working on could be released as early as this week. He said it will not include money for new caseworker positions, something both he and Hamilton proposed earlier this month. Those new positions, he said, will instead be part of the next biennial budget request.

“The reason I’m doing it in the budget and not this minute is very simply: We need additional training for the existing staff and i don’t want to take inexperienced people, pull them into a bunch of people that need additional training and do it all at once,” the governor said. “I want to solidify what we have … to grow that experience level and the training for those folks so they can become mentors for the new employees that we bring on later in the year.”

Caseworkers have been skeptical about the addition of new positions because the agency has not been able fill the positions that are open now.

LePage, in his weekly radio address last week, also said he thinks the child protective system should not rely so heavily on family reunification for at-risk children.

“I’m not saying that reunification isn’t important, don’t misinterpret what I’ve been trying to say,” the governor said Monday when asked about that. “What I’m saying is reunification should be a tool in the toolbox to help kids. What we do now is the top priority is reunification, so you take a child out of a high-risk family and you work with the family and you put them back in. How many times do you put them back before you make the decision of what’s the best interest of the child?”