Have you ever considered a career in risk management, teaching, providing health care, counseling, ministering to youth, managing a taxi service, or running a bed-and-breakfast? Are you flexible, willing to accept new assignments on short notice, available for 24/7 on-call duty, and interested in lots of overtime? Do you want to remain stateside?

Maine's largest employer is willing to reimburse you for 50 to 100 percent of your daily business costs, depending upon the level of difficulty and risk associated with your job. For nine months of the year, you will average 68 hours of employment per week, involving direct client support. During the summer, on holidays, and for a few weeks each winter, your working hours will increase to nearly 110 hours per week.

As a bonus, you will average between eight and 10 hours each night, year-round, of on-call time and an additional 7.5 hours on-call during school days. Annually, you may average 4,145 hours. This is double that available to most other full-time employees. In addition, your annual on-call time will exceed 4,600 hours.

To qualify for these positions you must pass security, safety and background checks, satisfactorily complete training and comply with continuing education and licensing requirements.

You must be able to work independently, manage others and budgets, have strong written and oral communication skills, attend meetings and court appearances as required and be a good team player. You will be expected to work well with doctors, psychologists, educators, social workers, attorneys, bureaucrats, children and their families.

These openings are now becoming available along with the announcement of new pay scales. Adjusted for inflation, a national organization and a major university study have determined that your business costs in Maine will run, at a minimum, about $34 per day.

At the two most challenging job positions, Levels D and E, you will be reimbursed for these minimal costs in full. Moreover, expectable damages to your home and property may receive some coverage by the state of Maine in the event your own insurance is inadequate.

At Level D, you will receive nearly $2,920 annually, tax-free, for your 4,145 hours and 4,600 hours on-call. This equals nearly 50 cents per hour, including about 20 cents per hour for on-call duty.

Actually, allowing time-and-a-half for overtime, your hourly rate will compute to 37 cents; nearly equal to the wages earned by highly skilled workers in industrial positions in many major cities (in mainland China.)

Level E assignments tend to be shorter term, owing to interventions by the criminal justice system and psychiatric containment. At this level, however, your per diem rate increases by $10.50. This is usually sufficient to cover increases in costs for fire and water damage, as well as increases in liability (agencies require that you indemnify them against claims, allegations, awards and legal costs.)

Although new hires generally do not immediately qualify for Level D or E reimbursement, after less than one year of apprenticing without pay and at a cost of under $6,600 (you will receive partial reimbursement for expenses above that), you may be awarded these more challenging, paid assignments.

If you do your job well, it is expected that the level of difficulty of your assignments and their associated risks will diminish. Upon a formal determination of such success, you will no longer be paid to continue that assignment but you will reap the satisfaction of a job well done.

Unfortunately, paid vacation and holidays, sick leave, family leave, weekend and holiday differentials, personal time, retirement and health benefits are not available. You are encouraged to avoid illness, births or deaths in the family and to defer that anniversary cruise until after retirement.

Interested applicants may contact any of nearly a dozen agencies with local offices statewide or the Office of Children and Family Services at the Department of Health and Human Services. Request information about the position of Specialized or Treatment Foster Parent.

Call now ... most of the agencies are expected to offer these opportunities for only a limited time (the state has proposed a consolidation plan that will collapse local agencies into one or two low-bidding super-agencies.)

Optimally, candidates will have graduate-level training in related fields, be strong of mind, body and spirit, have the patience of Job and have an independent, six-figure, pre-tax income or annuity. Call now!

Additional, related investor opportunities are forecast in a variety of services, including homeless shelters, institutional and residential-care facilities, juvenile justice, remedial education, family planning and out-of-state transport services.

Remember, our children and our most vulnerable citizens do not have to go it alone. You, too, can be Baldacci'ed.

Mark Katz of Hallowell is a nationally recognized systems analyst with special interests in health-care and pediatric mental health delivery. Before settling in the China area in the early 1970s, he was a National Science Foundation Fellow and doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with concentrations in neurophysiology and psychology. He is the chief executive officer, cook and dishwasher of a licensed treatment foster home and is certified in behavioral health.