Foster Families Story Archives - Page 2 of 3 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Rate Increases Approved For Foster Care Assistance Agencies

In a continuing effort to improve conditions for West Virginia’s most vulnerable citizens, pay rates are increasing for agencies that help with state foster care programs.

The Department of Health and Human Resources Bureau for Social Services announced on Monday in a press release that it will increase the administration rate for Child Placing Agencies by 10 percent.

A placing agency is a child welfare organization, other than one operated by the state, established for the purpose of placing children in private family homes or other approved living arrangements for foster care or for adoption. These additional funds will be used to recruit and certify traditional and therapeutic foster homes.

DHHR will also give a 30 percent rate increase for Socially Necessary Services Providers. Socially necessary services are interventions designed to maintain or establish safety, permanency and well-being for the Bureau for Children and Families’ targeted populations of child protective and youth services. They provide child welfare involved families with prevention services and supports to assist in reunification including transportation, supervised visitation and parenting skills.

“These providers are critical partners in our efforts to support the well-being of West Virginia’s children and families,” Jeffrey Pack, commissioner of DHHR’s Bureau for Social Services, said in the release. “We are pleased to provide this enhanced rate in recognition of their important work.”

The Bureau for Social Services anticipates these rate increases will be effective Oct. 1, 2023. Additional rate increases are being studied and will be proposed for state fiscal year 2025.

Those interested in foster care opportunities can contact Mission WV at 866-CALL-MWV. To view and apply for DHHR career opportunities, visit dhhr.wv.gov/Pages/Career-Opportunities.aspx.

Quarterly Newsletter Aims To Help Foster, Adoptive and Kinship Parents

Mission West Virginia and the West Virginia Department and Health and Human Resources (DHHR) have partnered to electronically publish a quarterly newsletter for families called West Virginia Kids Thrive.

“DHHR is committed to helping kids and families thrive in their home by improving access to community-based mental health and social services,” said Cammie Chapman, DHHR’s deputy secretary of Children and Adult Services. “We realize that parents and caregivers appreciate receiving timely and helpful information in various formats, and hope the West Virginia Kids Thrive newsletter meets this need.”

The newsletter includes helpful information for foster parents, adoptive parents and kinship caregivers.

Kylee Hassan, marketing director for the Frameworks Program at Mission West Virginia, said the Framework Program helps find families for children who are waiting in the foster care system.

“The reason we did this is another way to reach foster care, foster parents, adoptive parents, kinship and relative caregivers so that we can provide consistent and timely information for those families,” Hassan said. “So we’re going to provide things like any important dates in that quarter for those families that they should know about.”

Hassan said each issue will focus on seasonal information for parents, like back-to-school tips in the upcoming September issue.

“The next quarter will feature things like Kinship Care Month, which is in September, and National Adoption Month is in November,” Hassan said. “The next issue will likely feature things that come with school starting in the fall, clothing vouchers and things like that.”

Hassan said they welcome community input and ask the public to submit questions to be answered in upcoming issues of West Virginia Kids Thrive via email at KidsThrive@wv.gov.

“If people have any input, things that they would like to see, questions that they would like answered, please email that email,” Hassan said. “We will be happy to put content out that people would like to see and read.”

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Charleston Area Medical Center and Marshall Health.

Center For Excellence In Disabilities Provides Help For Foster Families

WVU’s Center for Excellence in Disabilities has been in operation for 43 years. It does not focus on one disability in particular but instead cares for those with disabilities at every age.

West Virginia University’s (WVU) Center for Excellence in Disabilities can assist foster care placements and is the only center of its type in West Virginia.

If someone with a disability who is also in the state’s care cannot find a suitable home, they used to be institutionalized. That’s according to Lesley Cottrell, director of the center, and a professor in the WVU Department of Pediatrics.

Cottrell is working to reduce that outcome in West Virginia by connecting foster or adoptive families with foster children with disabilities, called Specialized Family Care.

“I think one of the largest outcomes is their success, by placing those individuals into homes and finding providers who will open their homes to individuals with disabilities, which reduces our state rate of institutionalization,” she said. “The default, if you don’t find a kind of loving home, the default is an institution, and we’ve moved away from that many years ago. So that keeps us awake at night and really pushes us on that Specialized Family Care to find those individuals who could be providers and open their homes to individuals.”

The center is part of a 62-center network nationally funded by Accountable Communities in Living. Cottrell said they learn from and contribute to the network.

“That network provides a lot of information about employment, about foster care, many things connected to community living as individuals with disabilities, and we share that back to West Virginia, but we also develop some things and contribute to that,” Cottrell said.

WVU’s Center for Excellence in Disabilities has been in operation for 43 years. It does not focus on one disability in particular but instead cares for those with disabilities at every age.

“Because we’re the only center of its type, we have a lifespan approach,” Cottrell said. “So we have some pediatric programs, we have some geriatric and all in between.”

Each organization in the national network provides four types of services: direct services, training, research and sharing of information.

Foster Care Payments Delayed, Advocates React

Payments due to caregivers of 2,300 West Virginia foster children will be delayed in the month of February.

Updated on Friday, Feb. 10, 2023 at 4:53 p.m.

Payments due to caregivers of 2,300 West Virginia foster children will be delayed in the month of February.

According to a release from the state Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR), the delay was caused by the department’s conversion from the Families and Children Tracking System (FACTS) to the West Virginia People’s Access to Help (WV PATH).

The information had to be manually entered and appropriate payments are being processed now. Payments are usually issued the second week of the month and will return to their normal schedule in March.

Adoption subsidy payments will be made the week of Feb. 13.

Foster families experiencing issues with payments may contact DHHR Client Services at 1-800-642-8589.

Those with emergency needs may contact their local DHHR office and families may also dial 211 for assistance with locating local resources.

Advocacy Group Responds

The WV Foster Adoptive and Kinship Parents Network, an advocacy organization supporting those caring for the state’s most vulnerable children, released a statement Friday afternoon in response to the DHHR’s announcement regarding delayed payments to foster care parents.

The Network’s statement claimed that caregivers and foster parents throughout the state learned of the payment delay via automated phone calls just before the DHHR released their statement.

Marissa Sanders, Executive Director of the WV Foster Adoptive and Kinship Parents Network noted in the statement that many kinship and relative families are led by grandparents who live on a fixed income.

According to the statement, one caregiver who may be impacted said, “If there is a delay in receiving my stipend, it would impact a lot of my bills. I have to make arrangements to pay things on certain dates and when I have to break that arrangement because the funds aren’t coming when they’re supposed to then it’s hard and I take a chance on getting things shut off.”

Skyrocketing Building Costs Affecting W.Va. School Construction Projects

In April of last year, seven West Virginia counties (Mercer, Jefferson, Roane, Greenbrier, Mineral, Ohio and Summers) divided up $75 million in state funding to either replace, renovate or relocate outdated school buildings.

Inflated building costs are causing school construction projects across West Virginia to go back to the drawing board.

But with rising construction costs, the state School Building Authority (SBA) estimates a 25 percent increase to fund those projects, maybe more.

SBA Director of Special Projects Sue Chapman said the authority is working to refinance bonds and get an additional $29.5 million to supplement project costs.

She said each school district will also have to pare down on their original construction plans.

“Each of those counties are going to have to go back and look at their projects,” Chapman said. “And take those projects down to the minimum of what the school building authority may require in their policies for construction.”

Chapman said the state’s debt payment on the bond refinancing will come from excess lottery funds.

W.Va. DHHR Launches Child Welfare Dashboard

DHHR Cabinet secretary Bill Crouch says the public information website will be a living, changing dashboard, monitoring Child Protective Services statewide to show how the state is keeping children safe

West Virginia’s Department of Health and Human Resources launched its child welfare dashboard on Wednesday.

The dashboard includes state and county data breakdowns of children in foster care, out-of-state child placements and a county by county child welfare workforce tracker.

Marissa Sanders is the Executive Director of the West Virginia Foster, Adoptive and Kinship Parents Network. She said her organization has pushed for a dashboard to monitor accountability, and to help foster families gain understanding and find answers.

She said she was glad there is now a dashboard and believes it is a good start. However, she said the terms and numbers posted need some public explanation.

“When I look at the number of children and different types of placements, what do we mean when we say agency placement? Or we say therapeutic foster home. What does that mean?” Sanders said. “When I look at the workforce, and I see a list of positions, understanding the difference between a social service worker or child protective services worker versus a child protective services case manager or case coordinator, what are those differences?”

Sanders said she’s glad the dashboard lists the age ranges of foster children by county. She said that can help in the challenge of finding foster parents for teenagers.

“Sometimes we hear anecdotally there’s lots of infants in the system because of the opioid crisis,” Sanders said. ”So people think that’s the need, but really, the need is teens. So being able to see that is one way the dashboard can help.”

Sanders said the dashboard’s demographic breakdown of gender and age should also include race. She would like it to show trends and progress toward performance goals. But she does think it’s a great start.

“I think there’s a lot of room for building on what’s there,” Sanders said. “My sincere hope is that the department will work with foster families and our network and with others to help foster families understand the data that they’re seeing.”