At Foster Care Summit, Morrisey Promotes Increased Church Involvement 

West Virginia’s ongoing efforts to strengthen its child welfare system took center stage Wednesday.  

For the past five years, the All In Foster Care Summit has brought together the state’s churches, community leaders, families and child welfare professionals in Morgantown to strengthen support for vulnerable children and families across the state.  

With more than 6,000 children in foster care, West Virginia has the highest rate per capita nationally.  

Melissa Cargill, community coordinator for Chestnut Mountain Village Ministry which coordinates the summit, said the situation requires everyone’s attention.  

“This is a broad effort,” she said. “We don’t see foster care as an isolated issue, but more of an ecosystem and a whole community issue.” 

Cargill said that effort extends not only to children actively in foster care or families that are fostering, but also to vulnerable families on the verge. 

“Often their biggest issue is relational support. If they had people in their corner who cared and were aware of their needs, potentially that could prevent kids from going into the foster care system,” she said. “Making those connections between the church who cares and the families who need help, is key. So events like this are designed to kind of bridge the gap there and bring those people together.”  

Gov. Patrick Morrisey has expressed his desire to increase the role of churches and other faith based communities to bolster the state’s foster care system. Speaking at the summit, he said community-based solutions can respond to children in need in ways that government cannot.  

“Churches, faith-based communities play a huge role in this, because children grow up in families and communities, not in systems,” Morrisey said. “Collaboration at the local level is particularly helpful because, once again, communities, families, volunteers help children in ways that government doesn’t do very well.”  

Morrisey said bringing more people together to address child welfare will be critical to fix a system he says has been broken for 30 years. He promoted ongoing efforts to strengthen the child welfare system by better aligning the state’s efforts with the national “A Home for Every Child” Initiative.    

Morrisey emphasized reforms that have been recently implemented in the foster care system, including training for frontline workers, modernizing decision-making in the case management model and improving how placements are managed.  

But in the same breath he restated his desire to see more community, faith-based support for child welfare over government interventions. 

“This is what real reform looks like. It’s not about headlines. When we make decisions here, we’re looking out for the best interest of the kids,” Morrisey said. “I know sometimes people in the media like to take their shots. They don’t understand why we’re doing it. We have to make sure we’re looking out for the long term, not just setting up broad new government programs that are going to get people dependent. We need to have an inter-relationship with the programs in place, with the providers, with the faith-based system, and we have to have a system that’s durable.” 

Asked how this vision extended to children aging out of foster care, the governor said faith-based organizations could play a role in that aspect of the child welfare system as well, but that the state was exploring more options. 

“We know that we do have to be mindful of kids that are coming out and aging out, because that’s a vulnerable time. We want them to finish up their schooling. We want them to actually go forward and get good jobs, new opportunities,” Morrisey said. “So that matters, and I know that that’s part of the reason we wanted a little bit more flexibility, because we think that having one size fits all government programs, once again, that doesn’t work.” 

Morrisey vetoed House Bill 4730, which would have created support services for youth aging out of foster care. Wednesday he said he was not against the concept, but that the bill needed to be better written. 

“One of the other bills that didn’t make it across the line, quite frankly, it was setting up a structure that would effectively have mandated benefits for virtually everyone in West Virginia. And that was absurd, right?” he said. “So we have to write it the right way, and that’s what we’re working to do. So the intent behind it is very good, but we have to make sure that we’re looking out for the kids long term. And if you create a program for everyone, and you think that everyone’s at risk, it’s not going to be effective for the people truly at risk.” 

The governor vowed to continue working with legislators to find legislative solutions to the issues facing the state’s foster care system.