A historic springs resort in Monroe County is embroiled in a lease dispute, pitting a local investor against the state of West Virginia.
Founded in 1792, Sweet Springs was once a massive hotel and resort that could hold 300 people. Like the Greenbrier, Sweet Springs was a major destination for upper society tourists during the 19th century. It closed as a resort in the early 1900s, and though several attempts were made to keep it afloat, the property went into receivership in 1930.
Then, the property was used by the state Department of Health and Human Resources as a home for the elderly. The surrounding woods and farmland are still technically owned by the state of West Virginia.
In 2015, Sweet Springs was purchased by investor Ashby Berkley, who created a nonprofit, called the Sweet Springs Resort Park Foundation. Berkley has spent the past several years putting thousands of dollars and volunteer labor towards renovating the property. He had hoped to open it as a hotel by 2022.
But the lease on the 650-acre property surrounding the historic hotel is now being contested. The owner of this property, the state of West Virginia, says Berkley is not holding up his end of a lease agreement, signed in 2017.
Part of the agreement states that Berkeley would develop a viable agribusiness that would benefit the local community. The department hasn’t seen his plan.
This summer, the state Department of Agriculture issued a cancelation of the lease agreement. “I’m very confused about why the hostility is coming so hard from the Department of Agriculture,” Berkley said.
He added that he cannot continue the restoration project of Sweet Springs if he cannot use the property owned by the state.
In an emailed statement, communications manager for the State Department of Agriculture, Crescent Gallager, said his agency “is discussing a new set of terms with the current lease holders before exploring other options for the land.”
Berkley said he will comply with the state and do what officials are asking, but didn’t give any specifics for an agricultural business he envisions on the property. He said he’d like to build tennis courts and a golf course on this land, to serve the historic hotel. After he is able to reopen the Sweet Springs Hotel, Berkley said then he plans to devote time and energy towards developing agribusiness.
The state has given Berkley until the end of September to meet its requests.
It’s the morning of the first day of school for Megan Hullinger’s two oldest children. She wakes at 6 to prepare lunches and get her four children dressed.
Around 7:30, she packs them all into her car. 11-year-old Tessa, 8-year-old Abby, 3-year-old Nathan, and 1 year old. Gemma, her baby. She drops them each off at a different school, Abby to elementary school, Tessa to middle school, then Nathan at his child care center.
Her last stop before heading into the office is Gemma’s babysitter. Hullinger’s youngest child is on a waiting list to get into a daycare. There are only two options for a registered child care facility in her county, Pocahontas, a rural, mountainous area in West Virginia.
It took nearly three years for Hullinger to get her son, Nathan, a spot. “It’s almost impossible to get a child under the age of two into a registered center,” Hullinger said.
Courtesy Megan Hullinger
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A year after he first started school, her 3-year-old son is thriving. “He loves it, he loves his teachers,” Hullinger said. “He gets a lot of art time. I found out that he really loves to draw and write. It’s been really great for him, and to be around kids his age has been really great.”
Hullinger is happy with the level of care he’s receiving, and hopes her daughter Gemma will be able to get a spot at the same center. But she says she’ll happily take the first available opening- even if it’s at a school on the other side of her county, which is a thirty minute drive. That would mean an additional two hours on her commute each day.
Hullinger lives in what’s known as a child care desert. According to data from the Center for American Progress, over sixty percent of people in West Virginia live in a child care desert.
“It’s mostly the rural areas of our state,” said Barbara Gebhard, an expert in early childhood education, and a consultant for an initiative called “The Earlier The Better,” which is trying to improve child care in West Virginia. One of its main priorities is to help expand child care in rural regions, so families don’t have to wait years to get into a child care center.
About a quarter of early child care centers in the state closed last year, according to to Dr. Jeffrey, a pediatrician at Charleston Area Medical Center, and one of the people working on “The Earlier The Better” Initiative. Jeffrey worked with researchers at the Benedum Foundation to compile a map that shows the number of child care centers that closed during the pandemic. Their map shows a snapshot in January 2020. In the early months of the pandemic, many child care centers closed, said Jeffrey. Some were able to reopen, but the industry took a big hit in 2020– here in Appalachia as well as across the country.
Jeffrey said their group would love to see the state, or federal government, provide funding to help people open news centers in child care deserts, or work with existing child care directors to expand their businesses, so they can accept more children.
She and other child care advocates with “The Earlier the Better” say they also want to see more child care centers in West Virginia offer better quality education. That would mean staff would have more training in topics like early childhood development, and, ideally, bachelor’s degrees. It would help improve the level of care for all kids, including children with special needs.
More Than ‘Day Care’- Advocates Want Specialized Care With Trained Staff
In Morgantown, West Virginia, Tayrn Moser’s second son was having behavioral problems at his child care centers. He was two.
“He just had these outbursts and because the staff was not educated or trained on how to handle his emotions,” Moser said. “It turned into two to three-hour tantrums.”
The child care center her son was at eventually told Moser they couldn’t continue taking care of her son. She could have gone through the local school system to get him into preschool early– those programs exist in each county in the state, free for parents who have children with special needs.
But Moser found another child care center where staff were trained in occupational therapy, and she asked to be put on the waiting list.
Courtesy Taryn Moser
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“I knew that this would be the best environment for my son,” Moser said. “And once we got him into this facility, he was able to thrive.”
But it took 16 months before a spot opened up for her son. During that time, she had babysitters and family members help out, but it was a struggle. At times, she considered quitting her job to be able to take care of her son. “I didn’t want him to be left behind,” Moser said. “And every day, it was such a challenge. It was very, very hard for me to leave him every day. I was scared for my son. I wanted to stay home and I wanted to be with him.”
In addition to not enough spaces available for children, parents also face a high cost of tuition– about $10,000 per year per child enrolled in full-time child care. That’s more than tuition at a community college in West Virginia. This high cost is partly due to ratios– child care centers are required to have one staff for every four children under two years old.
At the same time, a family’s income has to be very low to qualify for any kind of subsidy to help pay. For example, in West Virginia a family of four would be eligible for partial assistance if their income is less than approximately $48,000 a year. For full assistance – meaning the family pays nothing for child care – a family of four would have to make less than approximately $10,300 a year.
Subsidized Child Care For Essential Workers, Regardless Of Income
During the COVID-19 pandemic, several relief packages included funding to support working families, as well as help support the child care industry. One of the biggest things West Virginia did with its COVID relief money was it put it towards paying for child care for essential workers, no matter their income.
The state also changed the way it pays child care centers for subsidized tuition. Previous to the pandemic, if a child was out sick or if their family went on vacation, the child care center didn’t get paid– if that child was receiving subsidized tuition. Now, however, child care centers get paid for the whole month, not by how many days a kid was actually in school.
“It encourages every child care center to accept subsidy and not use that as an excuse not to accept subsidy,” said Dr. Jamie Jeffrey. “So that every single child no matter who were where they are, has access to affordable child care.”
Jeffrey and others in her group put together some of the recommendations for how the state should spend its COVID relief money. They advised the state ’s Department of Health and Human Resources, which is the agency in charge of regulating early child care.
They’re hoping some of the new policies the state put in place during the pandemic will continue as infection rates and concerns drop off.
Their group also recommended that child care programs receive more money per child enrolled in their school. This is because child care centers were already struggling financially to make ends meet even before the pandemic. On top of that, during the pandemic many tried to reduce their classroom sizes, to allow for social distancing, and they had to do a lot more cleaning. All these changes take more staff, so some of the covid relief went directly to child care centers to help them stay afloat financially. It wasn’t a lot of money, but according to Jeffrey, it was enough to help many childcare centers stay open.
Low Wages For Child Care Workers
None of the COVID relief money West Virginia received went directly towards increasing pay for child care workers. Most child care teachers are paid low wages, around $10-$11 an hour, and sometimes, they don’t even earn sick or vacation leave. So retaining qualified staff is a challenge for child care centers.
“It is the worst we’ve ever experienced trying to hire staff,” said Helen Post-Brown, who’s run Sunbeam Early Learning Center in Fairmont, West Virginia for 41 years. “Luckily, we kept our core staff at the center, but we need more than them. And it has been very difficult to first find someone qualified, and then someone willing to work now.”
Post-Brown is another one of the advocates working on “The Earlier the Better” initiative. They’d love to see more funding go towards teachers, making their salaries equivalent to their experience.
She and other child care advocates with the “The Earlier The Better,” Project – are hoping that some of the changes that were implemented during the pandemic can become more permanent. But where the money would come from is not clear.
Right now, Congress is arguing over spending trillions of dollars to boost the country’s infrastructure. President Joe Biden’s “American Families Plan” includes funding for child care. This funding would help, but it would not be enough to fix all the issues that are facing parents and child care workers?
Back in Pocahontas County, it’s 3 p.m. in the afternoon, time for Megan Hullinger to pick up her four kids. Normally, her two older kids walk home, and spend the afternoon with a babysitter. But today— her sitter has to go to a doctor’s appointment, so Hullinger picks up her children a little early.
She says without her family to support her, and neighbors who’ve helped with child care, she doesn’t think she could have kept working while she waits to get her kids into child care.
She picks up her youngest, one-year-old Gemma, first. On this hot August day, Gemma is singing “Jingle Bells.” Then they swing by the elementary school to pick up Abby. Gemma wraps her arms around her 8-year-old sister. They head out to pick up Nathan next, and then Tessa. Then the family drives back up the mountain, to home.
About 39 million families across the U.S. — including 346,000 children in West Virginia — are receiving monthly child payments this week from the U.S. Department of Treasury as a part of the federal COVID-19 relief plan.
Families will get about $3,000 per child each month. The money comes from a temporary expansion of the child tax credit — part of President Biden’s COVID relief package enacted in March. The Child Tax Credit is one of the largest spending measures Congress has passed that goes directly to parents.
These payments could reduce child poverty by 43 percent in West Virginia, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy.
President Joe Biden and most Democrats in Washington are pushing to keep the child tax credit at these levels for four more years.
West Virginia’s congressional delegation is mixed on whether they would support this increased funding.
Republicans lawmakers Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, and U.S. Reps. Carol Miller and David McKinley, and Alex Mooney all say they are reluctant to extend the program. They offered similar statements, saying even though they support the increase to the child tax credit in general, they worry that larger spending packages that Democrats are proposing will hurt working families.
Mooney, Miller and McKinley also added that President Donald Trump’s Tax Cut and Jobs Act 2017 already increased the Child Tax Credit from $1,000 to $2,000 per child.
Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin is the only lawmaker from West Virginia who voted for Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which included additional increases for families. Manchin tweeted on July 14 that he is reserving judgement on the Democrats’ budget proposals until he’s had a chance to review their plan.
Prior to the pandemic, West Virginia had a budget of $ 48 million in federal funding to support child care, according to a spokesperson for the state Department of Health and Human Services. The state has received an additional $249 million in the past year from three COVID relief packages. Much of this funding has gone toward keeping child care centers open.
Last summer, 34-year-old Bijoulea Finney and her husband Drew packed up everything they owned in Austin, Texas and headed East. They’d just become the owners of a 75-acre homestead in southwest Virginia, outside Floyd. “I had never been to Virginia in my entire life,” Finney said. “And so we brought the property sight unseen, with only 12 photos on the listing.”
Finney and her husband are part of a trend that realtors are seeing across the country– folks itching to move into larger, less cramped houses, often looking to leave cities in place of more rural communities.
Courtesy Bijoulea Finney
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Drew and his wife Bijoulea Finney recently moved from Austin Texas to southwest Virginia, with their two rescue dogs. They both work remotely, and were able to purchase a house outside Floyd for about the same amount they were paying in rent in downtown Austin.
Finney’s mortgage is about the same as rent in downtown Austin. She runs her own video production business, and her husband works in the tech industry. They can both do their jobs remotely, and for a couple of years, they’ve been itching to get out of the city. “We were really interested in learning how to live off the land and be more sustainable, have a simpler life.” At first, it was just this idea they had. Then in March 2020, they began putting their dream into motion, looking at real estate online. “I think when the pandemic hit, it really really got the fire lit under us to want to go and do this,” Finney said.
They had a list of things they knew they wanted. Preferably, not too close to an ocean, to avoid hurricanes. And not the Western U.S., with so much land vulnerable to forest fires. “And it was actually really hard to find something that was affordable, and had land, and had water, and had internet in the United States,” Finney recalled.
When they drew circles around the swaths of land that were the least likely to be hit by climate disasters, they settled on someplace in Appalachia.
Courtesy Bijoulea Finney
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Home that Bijoulea Finney and her husband Drew bought in southwest Virginia in the summer of 2020. The 75-acre property has access to water, and high-speed internet, both of which were priorities to the couple, who moved from Austin, Texas.
“Being more connected to nature has really helped my state of mind and my health, definitely. And we’ve only been here since June. So this is all still very new to me.”
She and her husband are still learning to live in a rural community. Finney learned how to use a woodstove, via Zoom, from the former homeowner. She says a few of her friends in Texas have been following her journey, and are interested in moving to a rural community, too. And she’s met at least three people in Floyd who have recently moved there from out of state.
“I do see a smaller kind of back-to-the land movement happening, like it did in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” Finney said.
Courtesy Bijoulea Finney
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Bijoulea Finney is raising chickens at her new home outside Floyd, Virginia.
A hundred miles north, in Lewisburg, West Virginia, Erin Gutierezz and her husband are getting settled into their house, which they purchased in January. “It’s twice as big as what our house was in in Florida.”
Gutierezz was a teacher, and when the pandemic hit, she decided to retire early, since she has some medical complications. Then, tragedy hit. She and her husband lost their son in a motorcycle accident. Soon after, Gutierezz’s mother died from COVID-19. These losses made her question a lot about her life.
“I realized that you just don’t know in this life, what’s going to happen. You have to take those risks in and make it what you want it to be,” Gutierezz said.
Courtesy Erin Gutierrez
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She and her husband decided to move closer to their daughter and her family in Thomas, West Virginia. Their house in Florida sold the day it went on the market. Her husband drove to West Virginia, put a bid on a house he liked, and they moved the next month. So far, she loves it. Lots of trees surround her house. Cows graze in a nearby pasture. Deer wander onto their property.
The town where they bought their home, Lewisburg, is one of the more popular destinations in the state, but for the first time ever, every geographic region in the state is experiencing a housing shortage, said Raymond Joseph, CEO of the West Virginia Association of Realtors. “People want to come to West Virginia right now. We’re seeing that all over the state.” Many are from out of state, inspired by the pandemic to want more space. Some are buying second homes in West Virginia. “They look at this and they say, ‘hey, I can go buy some land, I can have a house. If I ever get in another situation like this where I’m on quarantine and jump in my car, I can drive to West Virginia go to my other house,’” Joseph said.
Many of these homebuyers are energized by access to hiking and forests where they can go four-wheeling, he added. They don’t want to feel cramped in a small apartment in the city, if a pandemic ever forces them to go into lockdown in the future.
But this real estate boom is putting the squeeze on some residents here, who are now feeling priced out of the housing market in West Virginia. Olivia Morris has been struggling to find her dream home in West Virginia’s New River Gorge. She said she wants to stay in her home state, but she’s questioning if she can afford it. She loves the area for its rock climbing, its swimming and hiking, and her dream was to save enough money to buy a small home in Fayetteville.
Craig Hudson
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31-year-old Olivia Morris wants to stay in her home state of West Virginia, and her dream was to save enough money to buy a small home in Fayetteville. But after a pandemic-fueled real estate boom in the New River Gorge has driven up housing prices, now she’s questioning if she can afford it.
“You have a great downtown and main street, lots of different things to do, places to eat by just walking down the street, or riding your mountain bike through the woods to get there,” Morris said.
In the past several years, Fayetteville’s housing market became pricey, at least compared to housing prices in most of West Virginia. A home in Fayetteville costs an average of $160,000; across the state it’s $113,000, according to Zillow.
Then when the pandemic hit, Morris said it felt like things just went nuts. “And now you have people who are coming in and just like buying a property left and right, and it hurts.”
Now she’s looking at communities outside Fayetteville, hoping to find something in her price range– about $70,000. She understands why people would want to move to this area. A lot of her professional work is focused on helping more young people stay in the state.
“It is really good for West Virginia that people are moving here,” Morris said. “But it also is hard, and it’s like, two things can exist at the same time. And those are the two realities that are existing for me.”
J.J. Cayton was placed in foster care when he was 12 years old. He was living in Braxton County with his father when a worker with child and protective services arrived at his home late on New Year’s Eve. He recalls his dad had been drinking, and the cops ended up at the house.
“And they took me to the DHHR [office] in Braxton County,” Cayton recalls. “I think I probably slept on the floor on some chairs, to be honest.”
Afterward, Cayton was placed with a foster family. He was lucky. According to the state Department of Health and Human Resources, out of every 10 teenagers in foster care in West Virginia, four end up being sent to a group home, a psychiatric hospital, or a shelter. Only about 50 percent are sent to live with a foster family.
After spending a little time in this foster home Cayton was returned to his father’s house in Braxton County, which is where he wanted to be. “It’s where I was raised for a long part of my life. I knew he needed me.”
But he wasn’t safe. Cayton’s dad physically abused him. “It would get to the point where I was afraid to go to sleep at night when he was angry.”
Time and again CPS returned to take Cayton away. He could have been sent to various group homes, or shuffled from place to place. Instead, he was consistently placed with Jill Cooper, and her family.
Janet Kunicki/ WVPB
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J.J. Cayton sits with his foster mom, Jill Cooper, and his therapy dog Pepper, on the Glenville Stage College, where he is a sophomore studying business.
“After J.J. had been with us, the first time we kind of built a relationship with the judge,” said Jill Cooper, Cayton’s foster mom. “So when he was back the second and third time the judge actually called us directly and say, ‘Hey, you know, are you willing to take him back?’”
Cayton formed a bond with the Coopers. With them, he had a home base he could return to, again and again, while the rest of his life continued to be topsy-turvy.
He kept in contact with his dad and still had hopes they would be reunited. Then things went downhill quickly. First, in 2015, his dad’s home flooded.
“My dad went back there after it had been renovated slightly, but I’d still say it was unfit to live in,” said Cayton. “My dad had also gotten pneumonia and COPD during this part of his life.”
Not long after the flood nearly destroyed their home, Cayton’s dad passed away. His birth mom, lives in the Philippines. Cayton came with his dad to the U.S. when he was two. He says he doesn’t have a relationship with his mom.
The Coopers offered to let him stay with them — permanently.
“My foster dad said, ‘We’d really like it if you’d stay with us,’” Cayton said. “Their kids and their animals liked me, and I liked them and their animals liked me. so it was the place I was the most comfortable in. I felt like it was the best course for me to go down.”
This was five years ago. Even though he’s aged out of foster care, the Coopers are his legal guardians. But he said it can be tough to be a foster child, in someone else’s family.
“They’re very involved with their own family activities,” said Cayton. “I respect their family and their family loves me, but I’m not exactly a part of the family. So I feel a little bit uncomfortable with family events and stuff and I just keep to myself for the most part, but I do love them. I respect them. And I appreciate them for trying to incorporate me.”
Despite the occasional awkwardness of family gatherings, Cayton said he’s doing much better now as a young adult coping with the trauma of his father’s abuse. Back when he was younger, his foster parents took him to a counselor, but he would never speak with them.
Recently, he began going to a therapist again. “So that has helped a lot,” said his foster mom, who persuaded him to talk with someone.
Through therapy, Cayton decided he wants to help other foster children, and focus on getting kids into safe homes when they are aging out of foster care. He volunteers with the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness. He made a short video for the group to share his story.
Working to End Youth Homelessness in WV
Today, Cayton is a sophomore at Glenville State, studying business. His therapy dog, a black lab named Pepper, wags her tail beside him and presses her head against his chest.
Cayton gives her a sip of his water from his water bottle, and she laps it up and returns his affection with a kiss. “Pepper makes me feel less lonely and constantly reminds me that she loves me because she just enjoys my company,” Cayton said. “Her love and loyalty are limitless, and she takes care of me. She is like my little baby, and I’m so excited to watch her grow up.”
This story is part of an episode of Inside Appalachia that features several young people who were former foster care children.
About 400,000 children across the U.S. are growing up inside the foster care system, overseen by government employees who are overworked, and agencies that are historically underfunded. When the opioid epidemic hit, foster care systems saw a massive increase in the number of kids in their care. West Virginia has been hit particularly hard. The state has the nation’s highest rate of children removed from their home and put into foster care.
Roughly 6,900 children in the state are in foster care, an increase of almost 60% over the past six years. And while state officials point to improvements in the past several years, others argue these reforms don’t go far enough, including 12 foster care children who are now suing the state.
“I’ve been in group homes, detention centers, emergency shelters,” said Geard Mitchell, one of the now-adult plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit that says West Virginia’s foster care system has failed to protect children. “I’ve been in just about every placement they could possibly put a kid in all in one short childhood.”
Mitchell and 11 other foster children are named in a lawsuit filed in 2019 by A Better Childhood (ABC), a child advocacy organization based in New York City.
Lawyers with ABC say the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources has made some improvements to its foster care system in recent years, but that these changes don’t go far enough.
“They have a lot of good policies, but they’re not implementing them,” said Marcia Lowry, a lawyer with ABC. The suit claims that foster care children in West Virginia are mistreated and shuffled between “inadequate and dangerous placements, forced to unnecessarily languish in foster care for years.”
According to the DHHR, 12 percent of children who are in the agency’s custody live in institutional settings, what the state calls “residential treatment programs.”
For teenagers, the rate is much higher– 44 percent.
Institutionalized For Eight Years
Beginning when he was 11 years old, Mitchell was shuffled between institutional living facilities, including an out-of-state group home in middle Tennessee.
“When I was 12, my worker sent me to a group home for a residential group home for boys that had committed a sex offense. And I didn’t commit a sex offense.”
A judge later found that although the DHHR investigated Mitchell for sexual misconduct, they never brought any charges or presented any evidence in court. And yet he wound up in a group home in Tennessee where most residents were over the age of 15 and had charges pending against them for sex offenses, including rape.
“I was mad that I was around that type of environment. And I didn’t need to be. It got to my head, it started making me like, depressed and it started to make me like, think, like, man, I’m never going to get out.”
Mitchell felt uncomfortable at the facility, and says he begged his caseworker to move him. But he remained there for a year and a half. Later, when Mitchell was 16, he was sent to a maximum security detention center in Boone County, West Virginia. He alleges the only reason he was placed in this prison-like environment was because there were no emergency shelters available.
“Most nights I would wake up and my back would be stiff, or my neck would hurt because I’m sleeping on pretty much bare sheet metal,” Mitchell recalled. He spent his 17th birthday behind bars. “I was depressed. Not because I wasn’t getting any gifts or nothing but because I had no one that I actually cared about or no one that I trusted to spend time with me for my birthday.”
Mitchell’s former lawyer, Scott Briscoe, says stories like these are too common in West Virginia. “I’ve have children in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, all up and down the East Coast. And I think that we need to focus on getting them the services here at home, instead of sending them abroad.”
And that’s one of the main arguments of the ABC lawsuit. That the state of West Virginia sends too many children to live in out-of-state institutions.
The state argues that the lawsuit is unfounded, and they’re already making reforms that will fix these problems.
The DHHR has implemented several programs, including the Safe at Home West Virginia program, which aims to keep more children with their families, or in their communities, instead of sending them out of state or to larger facilities.
They’ve also launched a program called the Children’s Mobile Crisis Response, where parents, caregivers and foster parents can call for help if a child, teenager or young person in their care is experiencing emotional or behavioral emergency. Mental health professionals can visit the home and help support the child, with the goal of giving them care in their own home, without removing them.
The claims in the ABC lawsuit echo similar allegations made by the Department of Justice. In 2015, the DOJ found that in West Virginia children with mental health conditions were being institutionalized for too long. Four years later, West Virginia and the DOJ signed an agreement that they would work together to expand children’s mental health services throughout the state. The state DHHR vowed to reduce the number of foster care children who are placed in psychiatric hospitals, group homes, and shelters.
As a result, in West Virginia, the number of foster children in institutional settings has decreased since 2015. From over 1,100 kids to 834 as of October this year.
However, it’s not clear yet how much the COVID-19 pandemic may be impacting this data. In an emailed response to West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Allison Adler, communications director for the DHHR, clarified that “Once the pandemic is over and all children are back in in-person school full-time, there may be a spike in the number of children in need of intensive mental health services.”
At a recent Zoom meeting hosted by the DHHR, lawyers from the DOJ acknowledged that there’s still a long way to go. “We all knew when we signed the agreement that this system reform is a long-term system reform,” said DOJ attorney Haley Van Erem.
“I’m really excited, that the state has done a lot of work in the midst of COVID in the last year to really get these services in place and put down the building blocks, and we’re really excited to see where that’s going from here.”
The DHHR has submitted a plan to the DOJ to address its concerns, which will go out for public review in January.
Legislative Reforms
This past year, state lawmakers passed bi-partisan legislation, HB 4092, aimed at improving the foster care system. The new law is still in its infancy, so it’s not clear yet if it will result in fewer children placed in residential care. “Part of the problem is that there are demographics of foster children that are hard to place,” said Jeff Pack, a member of the House of Delegates from Raleigh County, who was a lead sponsor of the bill.
Perry Bennett/ West Virginia Legislative Photography
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Jeff Pack, a member of the House of Delegates from Raleigh County, was a lead sponsor of HB 4092, which focused on reforming the state’s foster care system.
Among other things, this law provides more money towards placing foster care teenagers, and children with behavioral problems.
“The reimbursement rate from the state per day is increased for demographics of kids that are harder to place,” Pack said. “That was supposed to be effective Dec. 1, but they hit a little snag with that. So it may be into next year before that’s functional.”
The DHHR confirmed that this aspect of the new legislation is delayed, “DHHR is working with stakeholders to implement the contract as soon as possible; however, due to input from stakeholders, the process is taking longer than expected,” an agency spokesperson told West Virginia Public Broadcasting in an email.
HB 4092 provides nearly $17 million in additional funding for foster care, including funding for increased financial support to families providing care to foster children.
An additional bill, HB 4094, which also passed this year, established a new position, the “Foster Care Ombudsman,” who is tasked with establishing a statewide procedure to receive, investigate, and resolve complaints filed on behalf of foster children.
And while these legislative reforms do make changes to some aspects of how foster care is overseen in the state, neither law sets a limit on the number of cases that each CPS worker will oversee.
For the past several years, the state DHHR has struggled to staff all of its CPS positions. A 2019 report by the agency stated that 18 percent of CPS positions were vacant, and CPS staff have a turnover rate of 27 percent.
That’s one of the main changes to foster care that Mitchell and the other plaintiffs in the ABC case say they want.
“I just hope for it to better the system and change it, or supply more workers, and actually help kids out, instead of putting them in placements over and over again, just because they don’t know what to do with them,” Mitchell said. “I don’t think that’s fair to the children.”
Mitchell says he rarely saw his social workers, and when he did, they seemed ready to judge him.
“I was a child, a very young child at that, facing a courtroom. I definitely needed, like a bigger brother, like someone [who] had been through it. Someone that could teach me how to get through it.”
At times, Mitchell said, he lost hope that he would ever be free.
But something changed for him when he turned 17. On his 17th birthday, he had a surprise. “When we went into the dining room for dinner, the cook had put a piece of cake on my tray.” It was a small gesture, but it made a big difference.
After that, it was like, I started getting just a little bit more hope.”
He began thinking about the future. And he reached out to his uncle and aunt in Cleveland. They offered to take him in once he aged out of foster care. Mitchell lives there now, in their home.
He dreams of becoming a tattoo artist and opening his own shop.
“Because whenever I was locked up, and putting all these placements back to back, I had found one coping skill and it was drawing.”
One of his recurring themes is Mickey Mouse. He says: “For me, Mickey Mouse is a symbolization for me to where I never had a childhood. So it was a like, a constant reminder to, if I ever have a son to make sure he has a good childhood or if I ever have a daughter to make sure she has a good childhood.”
Mitchell agreed to a request during an interview to draw something that was important to him. His intricate design included the words “Stand Up for Children” centered on the page.
Mitchell is one of 12 plaintiffs in the case against the state of West Virginia, but lawyers are asking that this lawsuit be considered a class action lawsuit, on behalf of nearly 7,000 children. A ruling on that decision to consider this a class action suit is still pending. This case is expected to go to trial sometime in 2021.
Meanwhile, the State of West Virginia has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, and they dispute the findings in the complaint. They also filed a request to have Mitchell removed from the lawsuit as a plaintiff, on the grounds that he was not in foster care at the time the suit was filed.
State officials with the DHHR declined a request to do a recorded interview for this story. They emailed a response, which is excerpted below:
Response to ABC lawsuit: DHHR will not comment on the specific allegations related to a specific child, other than the responses provided in DHHR’s public filings in the ABC lawsuit, which have been carefully vetted by the agency and redacted as necessary to protect their privacy. West Virginia law requires that circuit courts review and approve all placements of all children in DHHR custody as the “least restrictive” available for the needs of the child and in the child’s best interest. West Virginia law prohibits a circuit court from placing a child in a detention center, unless he or she has been charged as a juvenile delinquent or with a juvenile status offense.
Response to DOJ investigation: West Virginia has significantly decreased the percentage of children in foster care placed in residential treatment programs since 2014. DHHR disputed and continues to dispute DOJ’s findings. For example, DOJ’s findings about the number of children in “institutions” included children adjudicated as juvenile delinquents who were ordered by circuit courts into residential treatment programs in lieu of detention at a Bureau for Juvenile Services detention center. Nevertheless, DHHR agreed to enter the MOU with DOJ because DHHR acknowledges there is a need for more providers of community-based mental health services for children in West Virginia, and DHHR believes it is in the State’s best interest to work with its federal partners (including DOJ) to expand access to those services. DHHR has taken many steps to expand access to intensive, community-based mental health since 2015.
*Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly named Mitchell’s former lawyer “Scott Driscoe”. Mitchell’s former lawyer is named Scott Briscoe. This story is part of an episode of Inside Appalachia that features several young people who were former foster care children.
