Human services pose early test for Charlie Baker administration

Human services pose early test for Charlie Baker administration

GOVERNOR-ELECT Charlie Baker knows from experience that the state’s human services system — child protection, mental illness, welfare, and juvenile justice — will pose the stiffest challenge for his new administration at the highest stakes. Baker served as secretary of health and human services from 1992 to 1994, a time when scores of people died under the care or control of state human service agencies — 42 suicides in the state mental health system in 1994 alone, according to a Globe article from that period. Human services advocates pointed — as they often do — to insufficient budgets. State officials pointed — as they often do— to better record-keeping that accounted for more suicides.