West Virginia’s family treatment courts are hiring people with personal experience with substance misuse to help guide and support parents who are in recovery.
The family treatment courts recently created four new “peer recovery support specialist” positions using state and federal grants, according to a news release from the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. The peer support specialists, who work as liaisons between court participants and treatment teams, are part of an effort to increase retention within the program.
Megan Griffin, the new peer support specialist in Nicholas County, said the program gives people going through the court system “the gift of being understood.”
“It gives participants the idea that they can have a life worth living, that they have a chance to begin that new life and change,” she said.
Supreme Court administrative officials said their goal is to eventually have one specialist in each of the state’s 10 treatment courts. The family treatment court program serves individuals with substance use disorders who are also involved in a child abuse and neglect case.
Nine months ago, Angie Johnson of Nicholas County got a call that would change her life.
Johnson, a mother of two, had just relapsed after temporarily losing custody of her infant daughter. She was back in an addiction treatment facility when someone from the local courthouse called and asked if she would like to give the new “family treatment court” program a try.
Through family treatment court, parents facing addiction have another option to resolve any abuse and neglect cases against them that could lead to permanently losing custody of their children.
The program connects its adult participants to treatment options, job training, housing, parenting classes and other resources for recovery — all while allowing for regular contact between parents and kids.
More than 180 adults had interacted with one of eight family treatment court programs in West Virginia by the end of April, according to the state Supreme Court of Appeals. By Thursday, 24 adults in five counties had successfully completed the program, including Johnson.
“Today means everything to me,” Johnson said after her graduation ceremony. “Because I am a good mom, I just made really bad decisions. To be 11 months clean, back to work, with reliable transportation and a home to put my girls in, it means everything to me.”
Johnson and her daughter were joined by four other Nicholas County families Thursday afternoon at the local courthouse. An area photographer had taken family portraits of the graduating families, and the framed results stood behind each participant as they accepted their certificates.
Two Different Courthouses
Meanwhile, about 90 miles west in Charleston, officials for Cabell County and the city of Huntington gathered at a different courthouse, arguing before a federal judge that three of the nation’s biggest opioid distributors should be on the hook for their role in the state’s addiction crisis.
The trial has been hailed as a major stepping stone for thousands of communities nationwide seeking similar damages.
“It did start off with opioids,” said attorney Denise Pettijohn, one of a few guardians ad litem in the Nicholas County family treatment court who represents the interests of the children involved.
“Nicholas County was a huge mining county, and that just all dried up. You have a lot of people who probably started off with prescriptions to opioids, to handle the pain of that very hard and rigorous job, and then we made it harder to get those. And they switched.”
To harder drugs. Court officials said Thursday the parents they work with are mostly dealing with addictions to fentanyl and methamphetamines.
Nicholas County Circuit Judge Steve Callaghan oversees the local family treatment court.
Emily Allen
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Nicholas County Circuit Judge Steve Callaghan oversees the local family treatment court.
As a judge Callaghan couldn’t speak about the federal trial in Charleston, but he spoke at length about the difference he thinks family treatment court programs are making in the state’s struggle with addiction and the separation of families.
“Before treatment courts, the only thing we had was law enforcement, and probation,” Callaghan said. “There was some rehab, but not a whole lot. But now, after treatment courts, we have a new way to try to solve the problem.”
Expanding To More Counties
Nicholas County celebrated its graduation ceremony weeks after the governor signed House Bill 2918 into law, allowing the state supreme court to assist more counties in creating their own family treatment court programs.
Callaghan said he invites any interested counties to his courthouse to observe the process, and that it’s not a program that a county can build overnight.
“You have to get the right people, you have to get the right providers and the right lawyers, the right guardian ad litem, the right probation officer. It takes putting together a team,” Callaghan said.
One of the tenets of family treatment court is regular contact between parents and their children, through supervised visits, phone calls and eventually reunification.
“We just did what we could to make it happen,” Pettijohn said. “There was a lot of FaceTime. We did a lot of Zoom visits … And when we were able to open up and start visits again, I think those visits were all the more meaningful for the kids and their parents.”
Emily Allen
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Family Treatment Court Coordinator Stephanie Smith speaks at a graduation ceremony for the first five families to successfully finish Nicholas County’s program.
Throughout lockdown, the court itself still maintained consistent contact with parents. They regularly visited the Nicholas County Day Report Center, and Family Treatment Court Coordinator Stephanie Smith still conducted in-person visits with participants every week, even if those meetings had to be outside.
Smith said that she and her team will continue to support the families they help, even after graduation.
“When we call this their safe place, their support system, I mean, it’s not just like a nice thing to say at the end,” Smith said. “It really is still there for them.”
Normally, Boone County Circuit Judge William Thompson holds his drug court graduation ceremonies inside the courthouse.
But on a slightly overcast August afternoon, he found himself and the first two graduating members of his family treatment court outdoors at Waterways Park in Boone County.
The water slides and pool were shut down to limit the spread of the coronavirus, but a picnic area by the walking trails was still open for those who wanted to gather and celebrate at a safe distance from one another.
Boxed lunches were stacked on a table off to the side, so attendees didn’t have to mingle to eat. Most people were wearing cloth face masks, and several brought their own lawn chairs.
Credit Emily Allen / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Boone County Circuit Judge William Thompson speaks at a graduation ceremony on August 12, 2020, for his family treatment court.
“A lot of times my favorite part of graduation is the cake that comes with it,” Thompson told his audience Tuesday – a mix of state and local court officials, lawmakers, employees from child protective services and other members of his family treatment program. “Unfortunately, we can’t do cake with the pandemic. So, you do have an individual cookie.”
Family treatment court works like adult and juvenile drug court, but instead of offering recovery as an alternative to jail time, family treatment court is designed to help parents dealing with addiction avoid permanently losing custody of their children.
The parents who join the program work with a team of experts who not only connect participants to recovery resources, but introduce them to employment opportunities and educational programs for parenting and continued recovery. Parents also get regular, supervised visits with their children until they’re ready for reunification.
“They love their child, and they want to do what they can to get their child back in their home and be a mom and dad,” Thompson said. “They want to be able to provide a home for that child.”
Credit Emily Allen / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Sabrina Ward speaks at her graduation ceremony for family treatment court in Boone County on August 12, 2020.
That includes parents like Sabrina Ward and her partner Matt Blackshire, who graduated Tuesday. They entered family treatment court in October for their daughter Adalynn, who they had lost custody of earlier that month due to addictions to methampetamines.
The program wasn’t easy. There were a lot of requirements, like weekly meetings with the judge, visits from child protective services, several weekly drug screenings and parenting classes.
Ward relapsed in November – but today, she’s been substance free for more than nine months. Both her and Blackshire also found jobs through the program.
“I was tired of that life,” she said in remarks to the audience at her graduation. “Since I have been sober, I’ve been able to pay off all my debt. I’ve bought things I want, Matt bought a car, I buy things for my child when I want and I started working at my first job ever.”
Although Adalynn returned home to her parents in April with regular supervision from the court, many parents in the program only saw their kids over video conferencing for months, due to guidance from the Department of Health and Human Resources that Child Protective Services temporarily halt in person visits for the coronavirus pandemic.
According to Thompson, what helped his participants the most at that time was the bonds they made with other parents in the program.
“I was not counting on them building a community with each other,” Thompson said. “They were all supportive. They all wanted the same main goal, which was to get their families back, which is something you don’t always see in adult drug court or even juvenile drug court.”
Going forward, as other participants graduate and the Boone County program grows, Thompson said he’d like to increase the communication and sense of community between parents.
Ward plans on creating an alumni group.
Family treatment court is active in four other counties – Nicholas, Roane, Ohio and Randolph – through grants from the West Virginia Office of Drug Control Policy. During Tuesday’s graduation, state Supreme Court Justice Tim Armstead announced more ODCP funding will be used to open family treatment courts in Braxton, Logan and McDowell counties.
The Boone County family treatment court – the first of its kind of West Virginia – received a three-year grant in 2019 for nearly $600,000 from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Only eight months after launching West Virginia’s first family treatment court, Boone County Judge William Thompson said the coronavirus pandemic caused some drastic changes to the program.
Family treatment court is a “problem solving court.” Instead of punishing parents in the abuse and neglect system for their addiction, it connects them to treatment options and resources to improve their parenting.
The goal, Thompson said, is to help parents reach recovery and get their kids back. As parents progress through the program, which consists of weekly meetings with himself and daily contact with a county case coordinator, they get more visits with their kids, until they’re ready for reunification.
Boone County had reunited its first family and was almost ready to reunite others, when COVID-19 hit West Virginia, causing the state to end most in-person court hearings and visitations for families with children in foster care.
“We had one young mother today who’s doing wonderful in the program and is at the point to be considered for reunification,” Thompson recalled from one of his weekly meetings, which he now conducts over phone and video conferencing. “And probably, but for the coronavirus, she would have had her child back with her at this point.”
In one meeting, the mother talked about learning her child had crawled for the first time.
“You could tell that for the mother, it was great that the baby crawled,” Thompson said, “but you could also tell it was breaking her heart that she didn’t get to see it.”
Hearing From The First Court
Thompson’s court was the first of five to launch family treatment court in West Virginia.
Advocates for the program say it could reduce the number of children in the state’s overwhelmed foster care system, who often are removed from their homes due to issues related to substance use disorder.
The programs were showing promising results, but now that the coronavirus crisis has restricted in-person gatherings, these five courts and their participants have been forced to adapt quickly. Inpatient treatment options are limited, and most outpatient appointments have moved to telehealth.
“While not perfect, and not ideal, we are doing the best we can in these circumstances,” said Thompson.
Credit Emily Allen / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
West Virginia Public Broadcasting visited the Boone County Courthouse in August, before the first family treatment court in the state was launched.
On March 20, the state Department of Health and Human Resources began advising virtual visits instead of physical visits, for families involved with Child Protective Services. Many parents with children in foster care haven’t been able to see their kids since then.
Some families whose children are in kinship placement, either with a family member or family friend, have been allowed some visits with the court’s permission.
The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals issued an order on March 22 declaring a judicial emergency, which halted all nonessential, in-person hearings until May 15. The supreme court issued another order on Wednesday, allowing in-person hearings to resume on or after Monday, May 18.
Parents, Kids Face Digital Divide
In normal circumstances, family treatment court functions best when parents can maintain regular visits with their kids. According to Chautle Haught, who leads family treatment courts for the state supreme court, the strength of this program hinges on developing healthier, more nurturing relationships.
“We require these participants to be involved,” Haught said. “We want them at every doctor’s appointment, every school function. We want them present in their childrens’ lives, as much as they can, as long as there’s no safety concerns.”
She compared family treatment court to other problem-solving programs, like the adult and juvenile drug courts that already are active in West Virginia, helping people avoid incarceration for addiction-related crimes.
“The difference with us is that our courts are involved in the civil proceedings, not the criminal proceedings that your adult drug courts and juvenile drug courts are,” Haught said. Instead of jail or prison time, she said, parents in family treatment court risk losing custody of their children.
Even in a pandemic, Haught said parents have made excellent progress in their recovery from addiction.
With school events and appointments on hold, courts are increasing the number of video visits parents have with kids.
“We’re doing lots of telephone visits, we’ve got some of our foster parents equipped with the same type of technology for Zoom and Skype platforms,” said Judge Thompson in Boone County. “But that’s been by far the most difficult part. I have a participant who’s doing everything they’re supposed to be doing. And I can’t get them the in-person physical visits that they deserve.”
Roane County Judge Anita Harold Ashley, who launched her family treatment court in January, agreed her four participating families struggle the most with not seeing their kids — especially since many Roane County residents have a hard time regularly tuning into video calls, due to unreliable broadband access.
“With the fact that there’s really poor internet service, and most folks have bad cell service, it just breaks my heart if they’re not seeing their kids,” Ashley said.
An Inconvenient Time For A Global Pandemic
These challenges come just as family treatment courts were starting to show some promising results. The supreme court reports there are 50 adults involved in Boone, Nicholas, Ohio, Randolph and Roane counties, with roughly 100 to 150 children between them.
Boone County has 16 adult participants and roughly 25 children involved.
Other, newer courts have said they hope to have the same success. Like Nicholas County, which was the fifth in the state to launch a family treatment court in late February.
Stephanie Smith is the Nicholas County family treatment court case coordinator. Like Boone and Roane counties, she said the Nicholas County program is different now than the one they planned for earlier this year.
“We’ll be excited when we can safely get back to doing things like normal,” Smith said. “But until then, we’re just chugging along and everybody’s hanging in there, making it work right now.”
Smith still conducts home visits with adult participants every week. Sometimes, she brings others from the family treatment court team with her.
“I talk to them [the participants] every day, multiple times a day, phone calls, text, whatever,” Smith said of the parents. “When I went out there, I mean, you could just tell that they really enjoyed that face to face contact … It really made a difference.”
Recovery ‘Difficult Enough’ In Normal Time, Challenging During COVID-19
Most of the resources parents are connected to — namely, those for addiction treatment and parenting skills — have moved online or become remote. Sweat patches that last two weeks have replaced regular drug testing, for example.
When the patches need to be changed in Nicholas County, the participants can visit the local Day Report center, which is still open to those in family treatment court and the criminal justice system, dealing with addiction.
“It’s difficult enough when it’s a normal time, trying to keep people sober and making sure they don’t OD [overdose] or anything like that,” said Nicholas County Day Report Center Director Gary Jarrell.
Individuals reporting to the center who are involved with the criminal justice system check in on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Jarrell said.
For them and family treatment court participants, the center has a recovery specialist on staff, who holds video meetings every week.
For those who need intensive inpatient care, Haught at the state supreme court said she’s in touch with probation services and their connections throughout the state.
The situation isn’t perfect, but there’s still evidence that families are benefiting from this program, according to Ohio County Family Treatment Court Coordinator Erin Jordan.
“There are some things that may not quite be able to happen,” Jordan said. “But they’re still going through their milestones. Some people have still advanced during all of this.”
Credit Emily Allen / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Judge William Thompson sits behind his desk in August.
In Boone County, Thompson noted parents are opening up more, and supporting each other in their weekly calls.
“They have sort of formed their own support system where they’ll depend on one another,” Thompson said. “It’s a stressful time, but they understand each other.”
Ohio County has even found a way to make family calls work, Jordan said, using money from grants that went to the five pilot counties, to support participants and provide incentives for their recoveries.
“We’ve ordered books, one for the child, one for the parent,” she said. “That way, with a video chat, the parents can read the book and the child can have the same book in their hands, looking at the pictures at the same time.”
An alternative solution to West Virginia’s substance use epidemic and foster care crisis already is “off the ground and running,” according to the Boone County Circuit Court Judge William Thompson.
Thompson’s court was the first to pilot a family treatment court program in September, after the West Virginia Legislature passed a bill earlier in 2019, allowing this.
Family treatment courts connect families who are dealing with addiction and are involved in the child welfare system to treatment and other resources. The goal is to reunite separated children and create a safe home environment.
According to a presentation on Thursday from West Virginia’s Division of Probation Services, the program is a collaboration between Child Protective Services, local substance use treatment providers and the county circuit courts. It’s meant to last nine months with a 90-day aftercare program.
There are two other types of “problem-solving” courts active in West Virginia, those being adult and juvenile drug courts. Unlike drug court, adults who enter family treatment court are not involved in the criminal justice system. They’re facing civil child abuse and neglect petitions.
Family treatment courts also involve more constant interaction between participants and the judge than normal drug courts. The program involves weekly meetings, treatment, frequent drug testing, individual and group counseling, and supervised visits with children until reunification.
Credit Emily Allen / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Boone County Circuit Court Judge Will Thompson was involved in bringing the first family treatment courts to West Virginia.
Thompson said Thursday there are 16 adults in his family treatment court now, with 28 children involved. Since getting a head start in September, Thompson says only one participant has left so far.
“Of those 16 adults and 28 children, I’m pretty confident 12 to15 of those participants would already have disappeared, not participated, not done what they need to in order to reunify the family,” Thompson said.
Thompson was advocate for family treatment courts during the last session, when the Legislature considered House Bill 3057. That summer, Boone County’s court system received $597,192 from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention for its family treatment court. According to a press release, that money is supposed to last three years and fund a few full-time positions.
The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals also received $339,599 from the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources’ Office of Drug Control Policy to set up family treatment court in a few other counties. Right now, the Supreme Court has approved programs in Ohio, Nicholas, Randolph and Roane counties, the latter of which Supreme Court Justices checked out last month.
West Virginia Director of Probation Services Stephanie Bond says 25 adults are actively participating in the program in all of the active courts.
As the program expands in Boone County, Thompson said he’s concerned that they won’t have the resources to take on everyone with a need.
“What are we going to do when we get to 25 or 30 [people]?” he asked. “We can only do so much. And we don’t want to dilute. We don’t want to add 60 people to the Boone County Family Treatment Court program if we can’t provide the services.”
As the program grows all over the state, Thompson told lawmakers they should aspire to have one available in each county, but he warned it might be a lot for circuit judges to take on, considering their other dockets. Already, Thompson told the delegates he handles about 30 to 50 child abuse and neglect cases a week.
Following the presentation, lawmakers questioned whether the level of inpatient and outpatient facilities available have the capacity to handle treating more individuals.
Thompson said he’s able to use some of the connections he has formed with inpatient and outpatient treatment centers through other drug courts to support treatment needs in family treatment court. Other counties might not have those relationships.
He called on legislators to consider supporting the local community-based Southwestern Regional Day Report Center, one of several centers around the state that provide sentencing alternatives for adults that have committed a crime but qualify to avoid incarceration.
In Boone County and the surrounding area, the regional Day Report Center also serves as a licensed behavioral health center. This center and others depend partially on local money, allocated by county commissions.
“I’m sure I’m not the first person that’s told the Legislature that coal’s not going great like it used to, and the tax revenues for the counties are not going great,” Thompson said. “Any help the Legislature can give on that, those counties would surely appreciate it.”
Adult, Juvenile Drug Court Updates
According to information from the Division of Probation Services on Thursday, there were 182 adult drug court graduates in 2019. West Virginia courts received 642 referrals, 413 of which were admitted and 216 of which were denied. The division reported there were 909 people involved, total.
The same information states there were 265 juvenile drug court referrals in 2019. The program admitted 214 participants and denied 18. There reportedly were 94 graduates.
In her presentation to the Prevention and Treatment Committee, Bond said these numbers might be somewhat lower than accurate.
Demographic information from Bond related to West Virginia’s adult drug court program in 2019 shows 94.6% of participants were white.
“I realize that’s probably proportionate to what the state is,” Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, asked Bond. “But it’s not proportionate to what our jails and prisons are. So, is there any — have you looked into that?”
“We’ve tried to look into that for the last couple of years,” Bond said. “We haven’t really figured that out.”
Drug-ravaged West Virginia has opened its first family treatment court aimed at protecting children while helping parents facing the loss of custody to overcome substance abuse disorders.
The court’s debut at the Boone County Courthouse in Madison was celebrated Monday. Family treatment courts also will open in Ohio and Randolph counties.
Boone County Circuit Judge William Thompson is heavily involved in helping people addicted to drugs turn their lives around. He’s involved in a court for adult drug offenders and envisioned the idea of a family treatment court a decade ago. He says the new court’s services are aimed at keeping more families together.
In a state of 1.8 million residents, more than 30,000 people are in drug treatment in West Virginia, which has by far the nation’s highest drug overdose death rate.
