Part 4 of 5: Examining Professional Licensing Complaints Involving Maine DHHS Office of Child and Family Services

The Maine Mirror | August 10, 2026

This is Part Four of a five-part series examining five professional licensing complaints I filed concerning individuals connected to Maine’s Office of Child and Family Services. This installment focuses on Complaint No. 2025-SOC-20911, filed against Stephanie Ann Gaddar, LCSW, a Permanency Supervisor with Maine DHHS/OCFS.

There are complicated child-welfare disputes where reasonable people can look at the same evidence and reach different conclusions.

Then there are situations where the timeline itself raises a very simple question:

How can someone be faulted for failing to return a document they were told was being mailed to them—but never received?

That question is at the center of my licensing complaint against Stephanie Gaddar.

And unlike so many disputes that depend entirely on one person’s recollection against another’s, an important part of this sequence exists in writing.

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The Email That Started It

On July 2, 2024, OCFS permanency caseworker Allison Harms emailed me.

Her message was straightforward:

“I wanted to let you know I’m sending over a release of information for you in the mail along with a return envelope.”

The release of information, or ROI, would allow Harms to communicate with my PHP treatment team.

The following morning, July 3, I responded:

“Absolutely ill fill that out:)”

There was no refusal.

There was no argument over signing it.

There was no indication that I intended to withhold authorization.

The worker said she was mailing it. I said I would fill it out.

But I never received it.

(Screenshot of a July 2, 2024 email from Maine OCFS caseworker Allison Harms telling Ryan Michaels that she was sending a release-of-information form through the mail with a return envelope, followed by Michaels’ July 3 response agreeing to complete the form.)

That email matters because it establishes something independently of my later complaint: Harms herself said the document was being sent by mail.

The complaint submitted to Maine’s licensing board identifies Gaddar as Harms’ direct supervisor and alleges that what happened next transformed what could have been a routine administrative mistake into something much more consequential.

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Then I Was Blamed for Not Returning It

By July 25, the problem had become serious enough that I emailed members of my legal team.

I wrote:

“Clearly allison must have forgotten to mail me a copy as I have never received it.”

And then:

“And now i’m labeled as the problem for not signing it.”

(Screenshot of Ryan Michaels’ July 25, 2024 email to members of his legal team documenting that he had never received the release-of-information form Harms said she would mail and stating that he was subsequently being labeled as the problem for failing to sign it.)

That email is important for another reason.

It wasn’t written a year later for a licensing complaint.

It was written July 25, 2024, while the underlying events were unfolding.

And according to my complaint, the missing ROI wasn’t merely mentioned informally.

It had already made its way into OCFS’s assessment of my conduct.

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A Missing Form Became a Finding About Me

The complaint describes a Family Team Meeting involving multiple OCFS representatives, including Stephanie Gaddar.

According to my complaint, OCFS discussed findings concerning my behavior and my “protective capacity.”

Among the written findings presented was this:

I had “failed to provide a release of information.”

There was an obvious problem.

I was still waiting for the release I had been told would arrive in the mail.

So during the meeting, I challenged it.

My complaint recounts my response:

“Hold on—I was just told by Allie Harms that she would be mailing the form. I haven’t even received it yet. How could I have returned it?”

According to the complaint, only after I raised that objection did Gaddar tell me that Harms no longer worked for OCFS.

(Excerpt from the formal licensing complaint describing the Family Team Meeting where OCFS allegedly identified Michaels’ “failure to provide a release of information” as a finding, despite Harms having said she would mail the form; the excerpt also describes Michaels challenging the finding and Gaddar then disclosing that Harms was no longer employed by OCFS.)

This is where my complaint against Gaddar becomes fundamentally different from a complaint about a piece of lost mail.

Harms leaving OCFS could explain why a document didn’t get sent.

People change jobs. Things get overlooked. Administrative mistakes happen.

But once the mistake becomes known, what happens to the inaccurate information created because of that mistake?

That is the issue.

My complaint alleges that the claim had already been written, discussed and accepted as a finding before I was informed that the employee responsible for sending the document had left OCFS.

The complaint further alleges that Gaddar then allowed the information to remain on the record rather than correcting it.

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This Is Why I Filed Against the Supervisor

Stephanie Gaddar wasn’t simply another person sitting in the meeting.

She was an LCSW and Permanency Supervisor.

My complaint therefore asks what I believe is an important professional-accountability question:

What responsibility does a licensed supervisor have after learning that an adverse finding against a parent may actually have resulted from her own department’s failure?

My complaint lays out what I believe Gaddar should have done:

• Intervene after learning the ROI had not been sent.
• Correct or retract the inaccurate claim.
• Ensure I wasn’t penalized for an internal breakdown beyond my control.

The complaint alleges she did none of those things.

Instead, I alleged that she allowed the representation to be formalized, waited until I objected before telling me Harms had left OCFS, failed to correct the documentation, and ultimately redirected me elsewhere without resolving the issue.

(Excerpt titled “Ms. Gaddar’s Failure to Act” from Ryan Michaels’ licensing complaint, identifying Gaddar as Harms’ licensed clinical social-work supervisor and alleging that she failed to correct the ROI finding after learning of the circumstances surrounding the unsent document.)

These are allegations in my licensing complaint, not findings that the licensing board has determined to be true.

That distinction matters.

But so does another distinction:

The underlying July 2 email is not an allegation.

The email exists.

Harms wrote that she was sending the ROI and a return envelope. I responded that I would complete it.

And my July 25 email contemporaneously documents that I still had not received it and believed I was being blamed for not signing it.

Those records are why I believe the questions raised by this complaint deserve answers.

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This Wasn’t Just About Paperwork

The larger concern is what information like this can mean inside a child-welfare case.

The complaint states that the ROI allegation was discussed alongside concerns involving my “protective capacity.”

That phrase carries far more weight than “forgot to return a form.”

When the government is evaluating a parent’s ability to protect and care for their children, accuracy should not be optional.

If a parent actually refuses to cooperate, document that.

If a parent actually refuses to sign a release, document that.

But if an agency employee says she is mailing a document, the parent agrees to sign it, the document allegedly never arrives, and the employee then leaves the agency, that is a materially different sequence of events.

And if an inaccurate characterization makes its way into a formal child-welfare process, correcting it should matter.

That is the central issue I asked the Board of Social Worker Licensure to examine.

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The Complaint Is Now a Matter of Formal Professional Review

On August 18, 2025, Maine’s Office of Professional and Occupational Regulation formally acknowledged Complaint No. 2025-SOC-20911 concerning Stephanie Ann Gaddar and stated that the complaint would be forwarded to her for a response.

The Board’s notice to Gaddar went further.

It instructed her to address each concern or allegation and requested relevant professional records and documentation.

Again, opening a complaint is not a finding of misconduct.

But that isn’t what I’m claiming it is.

I filed the complaint because I believe licensed professionals working within the child-welfare system should be accountable not only for the information they create, but also for what they do after learning that information may be wrong.

Because there is a much larger principle buried inside this seemingly small story about a missing form:

A government agency should never be able to turn its own administrative failure into evidence of a parent’s failure—and then leave that characterization standing after the discrepancy is brought to its attention.

That’s the question at the heart of Complaint 2025-SOC-20911.

And it’s why this story matters beyond me.