RFA 2019 Story Archives - Page 2 of 24 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Lawyers Ask To Represent All W.Va. Foster Kids In Lawsuit Against Justice, DHHR

A complaint filed last year against West Virginia officials, alleging that they violated the rights of a dozen foster care children, could expand after attorneys filed a new motion this week to represent the more than 6,900 minors in the state’s child welfare system.

Lawyers for A Better Childhood, a national child advocacy group, and Disability Rights of West Virginia asked a federal judge Wednesday morning to widen their 2019 class action lawsuit to cover all of West Virginia’s foster children.

The group filed a complaint in federal court in October 2019, denouncing the Department of Health and Human Resource’s “over-reliance” on shelter care, shortages in case workers and a “failure to appropriately plan for the children in its custody.”

The DHHR oversees the state’s child welfare system.

Attorneys wrote Wednesday, almost a year after filing their initial complaint, that the “unabashed failures of foster care in West Virginia have not driven [state officials] to undertake wholehearted reform.”

“Critically, these practices and policies affect all foster children in DHHR custody — whether they entered foster care due to a child abuse or neglect proceeding or a juvenile justice proceeding,” attorneys wrote Wednesday.

West Virginia has the highest number of kids per capita in state custody, according to non-profit child welfare organization the Children’s Home Society. The number of West Virginia children in foster and kinship care has doubled since 2015 largely due to the opioid epidemic.

By July, according to the motion for class certification on Wednesday, the DHHR had approximately 6,970 children in its custody.

“The lawsuit is really designed to bring systemic change,” Lori Waller, a staff attorney for Disability Rights of West Virginia, said Wednesday. “This is not like a pharmaceutical suit, where it’s like, ‘OK, well, you’ve taken this kind of drug, we can get you some money.’ This is strictly like looking at systemic change.”

State officials named in the lawsuit — including leadership at the DHHR, commissioner Linda Watts from the Bureau for Children and Families and Gov. Jim Justice – are requesting a two-month extension to file their response to Wednesday’s motion.

State Response

In a written statement to West Virginia Public Broadcasting on Wednesday, DHHR Cabinet Secretary Bill Crouch said the 12 children named in the lawsuit misrepresent the state’s foster care population.

He said the lawsuit “completely ignore[s] the legislative and executive branch work of the 2019 and 2020 legislative sessions” and that it downplays a settlement that the DHHR reached with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2019, following an investigation from the federal government years earlier.

“It further alleges that foster children are subject to widespread placement instability, but ignores the fact that DHHR has one of the best records in the country of keeping children in stable placements,” Crouch said of the complaint.

DHHR spokesperson Allison Adler clarified that Crouch was referring to a few charts at the end of a three-year aggregate report compiled by the federal Children’s Bureau, following the agency’s review of various states’ child welfare systems.

According to one chart, in West Virginia, more than 45 percent of all children in foster care for more than two years found permanent placement within a 12-month review period.

Children who had been in West Virginia’s foster care system for one to two years found permanent placement nearly 60 percent of the time, according to another chart following the same 12-months.

A third graph estimated that West Virginia foster care children, during the 12-month review period, moved on average less than 2.5 times per 1,000 days.

West Virginia ranked better than other states in these graphics, although the report’s writers said it was “inappropriate to compare” states due to the “variations in the size, structure, and timing” of each state’s review.

Marcia Lowry, an attorney for A Better Childhood, said that she believes more West Virginia-specific data from the same report, featured in a different document, paints a more accurate picture.

In this document, the Children’s Bureau states “The agency [DHHR] struggled to make concerted efforts for the goals of timely reunification, discharge to guardianship, and timely adoption. Additionally, the agency did not make concerted efforts to place youth with a goal of another planned permanent living arrangement in a permanent arrangement in applicable cases.”

According to Lowry, nine of the original 12 children in the class action were moved more than 100 times since entering foster care.

“That’s pretty appalling,” Lowry said. “And that’s in part because they don’t the state of West Virginia has been unable to continue to recruit enough foster families for the kids. And so, these kids are moving from place to place, and you can imagine how good that is for children. I mean, it’s basically destroying them to move so frequently.”

Working Toward Systemic Change

Both the Children’s Bureau report and the DHHR’s Crouch referenced the work West Virginia has done to better its system. In 2014, West Virginia piloted its “Safe at Home” project, which the state has since expanded to all counties, providing intensive in-home services to families with children between 12 and 17 years of age, who risk separation.

Most recently the Legislature passed a bill pledging $16.9 million to increase foster and kinship family payments, and in 2019 the state transitioned to a managed care system for health services.

Lowry said those efforts have fallen short of the systemic change she and others are requesting in federal court.

“Has the settlement with the Department of Justice made a difference? Not at all, not so far,” she said on Friday. “Is the new managed care system for health services going to make a difference? Maybe a little, and maybe that’ll be better, but it’s not going to deal with the fundamental problems that we’ve seen in the child welfare system.”

A scheduling order from the federal judge overseeing this case called on the DHHR to respond to the class certification motion by Sept. 16.

The DHHR request for a two-month extension likely will further delay a trial scheduled for June 15, 2021.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

More Than 1,000 Naloxone Kits Distributed Across Putnam, Kanawha Counties

On Wednesday, dozens of bright yellow signs were sprinkled across more than a dozen towns in Putnam and Kanawha counties, some accompanied by purple balloons, others leading to tents and tables with bright yellow bags and pamphlets.

“FREE NALOXONE TODAY,” the signs advertised. “OVERDOSE REVERSAL DRUG.”

Naloxone, sometimes called Narcan, is a medication that can be administered nasally or by injection, to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. It can prevent an otherwise fatal outcome, and advocates say it can offer someone dealing with addiction a chance at recovery.

Kanawha and Putnam counties held an event on Wednesday, Sept. 2, where volunteers say they distributed more than 1,000 naloxone kits.

Depending on a person’s tolerance for opioids, naloxone will sometimes cause side effects like sweating, vomiting, a runny nose and increased heart rate.

“But if a person is not breathing, or not breathing well, the chance that naloxone will save their life is more important than any possible side effects,” said Jamie Menshouse-Lukhmanova, a collegiate recovery coach at Marshall University.

She was one of several volunteers outside Bridge Valley Technical Community College, training others on how to recognize an overdose, how to use naloxone and what to do after administering the drug.

Naloxone can come in several different forms. The training offered on Wednesday covered syringes, thigh injections and nasal spray.

Volunteer Jamie Menshouse-Lukhmanova shows how to administer Narcan during Save a Life Day on Wednesday, Sept. 2.

“The first time I administered naloxone, I was still in active addiction, so I was really scared,” Menshouse-Lukhmanova said. “But thankfully, the person had Narcan on them already, and Narcan was really easy to administer to them.”

The process works best when either the person administering naloxone, or the person in need of naloxone, keeps the substance in an accessible place. Because people are supposed to call emergency responders when preparing to administer naloxone, there are also laws in place to protect anyone who, in good faith, administers naloxone from criminal charges.

“I called 911 and overall, it was okay,” Menshouse-Lukhmanova said. “Police didn’t even show up. It was just EMS, and they gave both of us basically referral information for [recovery] services.”

Community Distribution An Effort From Several Groups

The event on Wednesday, spanning Putnam and Kanawha counties, had support from the West Virginia Office of Drug Control Policy and funding from various health groups, including $30,000 from the Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation and $10,000 from the CAMC Foundation. Organizers said there was also funding and support from the University of Charleston, the Kanawha County Health Department, the West Virginia Bureau for Behavioral Health, West Virginia Health Right and Cabin Creek Health Systems.

Most of the money was directed toward naloxone, and by the end of Wednesday organizers reported that they had distributed more than 1,000 kits. Leftovers will go to Solutions Oriented Addiction Response, a group that administers naloxone and works to remove the stigma associated with substance use disorder.

Other groups, including churches and recovery organizations, helped plan and staff distribution sites across more than a dozen towns.

Roughly 15 miles from the naloxone site in Montgomery, staff at the Chesapeake Healthcare Center said they had already distributed more than 20 kits by noon.

Therapist Kevin Nichols at Chesapeake Healthcare Center carries a yellow “free naloxone” sign on Save a Life Day, Wednesday, Sept. 2.

“One of the individuals that we actually had come by, she said, ‘It would be irresponsible not to take advantage of this one when it’s free,’” said the center’s CEO, Genise Lalos.

Chesapeake Healthcare Center has lost two patients to overdose deaths since West Virginia began responding to the pandemic, according to Lalos.

“Both could have been prevented if someone would have been there with Narcan,” Lalos said. “These individuals were young and they had families of their own. It’s not only the tragedy of that person’s death, but it’s the tragedy of what they leave behind, and all the people who are affected, who cared about that person.”

Overdoses Increase As Pandemic Wages On

Statewide, as in-person resources for recovery are restricted and stressors increase, emergency responders are reporting more overdoses.

From May to July, paramedics responded to more than 2,500 suspected overdose calls, according to the Office of Drug Control Policy.

For that same stretch of time in 2019, EMS reported responding to 1,900.

From March to the end of July, the ODCP has reported a little more than 3,000 emergency room visits statewide, all related to overdoses.

“What’s been really sad about COVID-19 in the recovery field is that it seems like West Virginia has had more people in the ER from overdoses than COVID,” said Fran Gray, program director for Recovery Point in Charleston. “It just feels like we still have an epidemic happening on top of this pandemic.”

Recovery Point is an abstinence-based recovery home for people living with substance use disorder, with a few locations across the state.

At the women’s site in Charleston, where Gray works, residents have spent the last month organizing bright yellow backpacks with recovery information inside, for volunteers to hand out on Save a Life Day.

Normally, Gray said September – which is national recovery month – is filled with events for supporting recovery efforts, and removing some of the stigma around substance use disorder. The pandemic has forced some event organizers to either cancel or go remote.

“It’s really sad, honestly, because before COVID, it really felt like we were making this huge impact on the recovery community,” Gray said. “There was really a lot of momentum, a lot of people understood and then with the pandemic, you can tell it’s been watered down a little bit.”

Hope For Harm Reduction Efforts

Lindsay Acree works as an assistant professor at the University of Charleston’s School of Pharmacy, and she joined Gray, Johnson and others to help plan Save a Life Day. She also trains volunteers who want to distribute or administer naloxone.

“It’s a little easier for someone that’s already in the community to get out there and reach individuals that need Naloxone than it is for other individuals, sometimes,” Acree said. “If there’s that community connection, that helps so that they can actually reach the people that need it.”

Save a Life Day was made possible in part by a new law that went into effect earlier this year, establishing a community-based distribution model. Any group with a standing order from a pharmacy, with training, can distribute naloxone and train others on its use.

Collegiate recovery coach Annette Johnson for Bridge Valley Technically and Community College holds one of several Narcan kits volunteers distributed in Montgomery on Wednesday, Sept. 2.

Annette Johnson, a collegiate recovery coach for Bridge Valley Technical and Community College, said Wednesday she hopes to see more efforts to increase community access to naloxone, and increased support for harm reduction initiatives like the program in Fayette County, where staff conduct testing for sexually transmitted infections and facilitate a needle exchange program.

“It saves lives,” Johnson said. “It prevents diseases, and then there’s recovery coaches there that can help and guide people, point them in the right direction and be there for support.”

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Community Groups In Putnam, Kanawha Prepare To Distribute 1,000 Naloxone Kits Wednesday

The West Virginia Office of Drug Control Policy is piloting a new event Wednesday, called Save a Life day, where more than 15 sites across Putnam and Kanawha Counties are prepared to distribute 1,000 naloxone kits to anyone who comes their way.

Naloxone is a drug used to reverse the effects of an overdose – it can be administer by either a syringe or a nasal spray, like Narcan.

The event is an effort from the state ODCP, with funding from the Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation and the CAMC Foundation.

Participating organizations include churches, clinics and community groups. Peer recovery coaches will be at most sites to offer recovery resources and educational materials.

Dr. Lindsay Acree, an assistant professor at the University of Charleston School of Pharmacy, trains people to give and administer naloxone.

“Naloxone is really, it’s a life-saving drug,” Acree said. “It does not treat the substance use disorder, but it keeps people alive. And that’s really what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to keep people alive, so that they have the opportunity to go into recovery.”

The event is made possible in part after a new law went into effect this year, establishing a community distribution model for naloxone, meaning any governmental or non-governmental organization with a standing order from a pharmacy can hand out this medication.

“It’s a little easier for someone that’s already in the community to get out there and reach individuals that need naloxone than it is for other individuals,” Acree said. “If there’s that community connection, that helps … so that they can actually reach the people that need it.”

Most sites will be open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 2.

Charleston:

Cabin Creek Health Systems Admin Building at 104 Alex Lane

Risen City Church at 1410 4th Ave.

West Virginia Health Right at 1520 Washington St E

Drop-in Center, 1001 Smith St.

South Charleston:

Cafe Appalachia at 206 D St.

Cross Lanes:

Cross Lanes United Methodist Church, 5320 Frontier Dr.

Chesapeake:

Chesapeake Healthcare Center, 11950 MacCorkle Ave.

Dunbar:

Serenity Club, 1225 Ohio Ave.

Elkview:

Elkview Baptist Church at 1150 Main St.

Hurricane:

Church of Christ at 600 Midland Trail

Montgomery:

The Grid (Bridge Valley Community and Technical College) at 807 2nd Ave.

Nitro:

Kingdom Life Fellowship at 405 1st Ave S.

Scott Depot:

Church at the Depot at 6496 Teays Valley Road

Sissonville:

Sissonville Health Center at 6135 Sissonville Dr.

St. Albans:

Gateway Church of Christ at 422 B St.

Winfield:

Winfield United Methodist Church at 20 Radwin Dr.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Counties With High COVID-19 Numbers Turn Down Student Athlete Testing, To Miss First Games

School superintendents in three counties with especially high numbers of COVID-19 cases are forgoing an offer from the governor to test all of their student athletes, a proposal that he said would’ve allowed teams to compete in their first respective games of the season this week.

Original guidance from the state calls on counties with higher numbers of daily COVID-19 cases than others to cancel public sporting events, holding only practices for their student athletes.

Following a protest outside the Capitol from parents on Monday, Gov. Jim Justice offered that afternoon to test all student athletes in counties affected by this guidance. Barring one positive result per team, Justice said, the state would allow them to play this weekend.

School officials in these three counties –Fayette, Logan and Kanawha – said they would not ask their athletes to participate in the testing because they were more interested in reducing in-person activities, to ensure a safer start to school next week on Sept. 8.

“I think we need to focus on our testing priorities,” state Sen. Stephen Baldwin, D-Greenbrier, told West Virginia Public Broadcasting Monday. Baldwin represents Fayette County, one of the three who were eligible but declined Justice’s testing offer. “Playing sports for a week is not a crisis. We have people dying.”

Fayette, Logan and Kanawha counties were all colored orange Saturday night, referring to a color-coded map of the state designed to document each county’s number of daily COVID-19 cases on a rolling seven to 14-day average.

Orange is the second worst color to red, which would require schools to cancel in-person classes for the week and practices for student athletes.

Justice said Monday his offer to test all student athletes in the three orange counties – which, according to the state’s color-coded map, were required to cancel games – was a “one-time opportunity.”

“We have consulted with every health expert, we’ve consulted with all kinds of people,” Justice said. “… We’re going to test all the coaching staff, all those that are involved, the bands, everybody in those three counties.”

In Fayette County, superintendent Gary Hough said coaches and principals all agreed the testing would be a lot of work for schools that were already prepared to cancel or reschedule their games later this week.

“I think they wondered how that could all be done in 24 hours,” Hough said of high school principals and coaches. “A lot of them had already rescheduled games.”

In Logan County, superintendent Patricia Lucas said schools there already canceled their games this week, due to their red status on the color-coded map of West Virginia counties last week.

“We were not at a place where we could’ve competed this Friday anyway,” Lucas said.

Kanawha County schools released a statement Monday afternoon, in which their superintendent Tom Williams said the focus would “be on making sure that we do everything in our power to get our students back to school.”

Increased Community Transmission

Kanawha County, West Virginia’s most populous, had three outbreaks in long-term care facilities as of Monday afternoon, according to the governor.

Logan County recently was in the red on the state’s color-coded map for counties earlier in August, while dealing with several coronavirus outbreaks among churches and one at the Logan Regional Medical Center.

Although many of the Logan County residents infected from those outbreaks have recovered and several residents there have died, Justice reported there were still active coronavirus cases at the local Trinity Health Care Services nursing home.

More than 140 prisoners at the Mount Olive Correctional Complex in Fayette County have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation on Monday. Local health officer Anita Stewart said Monday the county also has seen more community transmission, or cases that aren’t linked to out of state travel, following COVID-19 surges from neighboring counties.

“The counties that surround us – you know, Raleigh, Kanawha, those counties in particular – have had increasing numbers in the last three weeks,” Steward said. “So, it’s not surprising that we’re seeing an increase in our numbers here, two to three weeks after they saw a surge.”

Monongalia and Mingo counties were also in the orange zone Monday. Although both counties’ athletes are still allowed to play games this weekend because they remained in the yellow on Saturday, Justice said Monday that he hoped to offer the two communities additional testing.

Monroe County, where several residents and staff at the Springfield Nursing Home have tested positive for the coronavirus, was in the red on Monday. Schools there are not allowed to have practices or games for the week.

Although Justice said his testing offer was a “one time opportunity,” implying schools will stick to the rules accompanying the color-coded map once school starts next week, he and other health officials encouraged people to seek testing, regardless, to ensure “healthy opportunities.”

“We are highly cognizant that the time frame of delivering any tests back is a challenge for us,” said the state’s coronavirus czar, Dr. Clay Marsh, on Monday. “We have worked with a few organizations to try to make sure that these particular tests return [rapidly] … not only because that that will impact the ability of the teams to schedule to play the teams that would be eligible after testing, but also so that we can prepare the communities and the schools for the ability to get back into classrooms.”

The pressure of the fast turnaround was one of the reasons why at least Fayette County decided against the testing, according to local superintendent Hough.

According to the state Department of Health and Human Resources, the state has contracts with five laboratories for coronavirus testing. Commissioner Bill Crouch for the DHHR announced the state was partnering with two more private labs to minimize the time that West Virginians spend waiting on their results.

DHHR spokesperson Allison Adler clarified that the state has contracts pending with Quest and Ipsum laboratories.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Corrections Officials Report First COVID Death In Charleston, More Than 30 Cases At Mount Olive

This article was updated Saturday, Aug. 29, to include details from the U.S. Marshals Service.

The first person to die of COVID-19 at a state-run jail is a 40-year-old man from Wood County who was being held on federal charges, according to a news release from the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation on Friday.

He died at a hospital on Friday after testing positive for the coronavirus within the last week, the DCR said. Health officials determined during a preliminary assessment that he died from COVID-19.

The DCR reported that the man had underlying medical conditions.

The U.S. Marshals Services confirmed late Friday evening that it was one of their prisoners in a state facility that had died. According to federal court records, the man was indicted in January on four counts of distribution and attempted distribution of child pornography, followed by a fifth count of possession of child pornography.

Records show he had an upcoming jury trial in September. A federal judge rescheduled his trial a few times after deciding against the original date in March.

The U.S. Marshals Service reported Friday that it houses nearly 70 percent of its prisoners in facilities run by state and local governments. That includes the South Central Regional Jail, which data from the DCR shows was roughly 80 people over capacity on Friday.

Officials for the DCR and the state Bureau for Public Health have consulted federal laws for health information privacy, according to BPH spokesperson Allison Adler, and are not providing “identifying details” around the man’s death.

That applies to information from state officials on the man’s medical treatment before dying, according to DCR spokesman Lawrence Messina.

This first death in a state correctional facility comes more than three months after the DCR reported its first inmate case on May 19 at the Huttonsville Correctional Center in Randolph County, where more than 100 employees and prisoners later tested positive in the weeks that followed.

The DCR reported its first employee case of COVID-19 on April 24.

The Wood County man, who died at some point within the last week, tested negative for the coronavirus earlier in August during a facility-wide round of enhanced testing, according to the DCR.

Roughly 450 prisoners and 80 employees at the Charleston jail have tested negative for the coronavirus in the last month.

On Friday, the DCR reported seven active cases of COVID-19 among Charleston prisoners and 57 recovered cases.

One employee for the Charleston jail still has COVID-19. The DCR reported on Thursday that six employees have recovered.

The South Central Regional Jail was nearly 80 people over capacity on Friday.

Nine out of ten state jails were over capacity on Friday, according to data from the DCR. This is despite guidance from state court officials to county prosecutors and judges in March, requesting that they help reduce the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent crimes.

All state prisons were near or under capacity on Friday, according to data from the DCR.

Corrections officials were tracking more than 30 active cases of the coronavirus on Friday at the Mount Olive Correctional Center in Fayette County.

The agency is waiting on more than 850 results after testing all prisoners and staff at the southern West Virginia prison, according to the Friday news release. The DCR reported 13 Mount Olive employees with COVID-19 the same day.

South Central Regional Jail and Mount Olive are the most recent facilities where the DCR has conducted enhanced testing of all prisoners, since wrapping up a statewide enhanced testing effort in June, following the outbreak at Huttonsville.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Kanawha County Goes Orange On Color-Coded Community Spread Map For COVID-19

Kanawha County is the latest to advance in the state’s color-coded map for community coronavirus spread in counties.

It moved into the orange zone from 9.7 average daily cases per 100,000 people on a rolling 7-day average Sunday, to nearly 12 on Tuesday.

“Nobody said this was going to be easy, and nobody ever said a pandemic would not be something that would be very difficult for all of us to deal with it,” Gov. Jim Justice said during a regularly scheduled, virtual press briefing Wednesday. “And we’re doing it and we’re doing a great job, but we got to get these counties out of orange. That’s for sure.”

Logan and Monroe counties were also in orange on the state’s color-coded map for community spread. That means state officials have tracked 10 to 24.9 daily cases in these counties per 100,000 people, either on the 7-day rolling average or a 14-day rolling average for counties with less than 16,000 people.

The state is using the map for school reopenings after the first day of in-person classes begins Sept. 8. The map also applies to after-school activities like sports and rules for nursing home visits and group activities.

If school was already in session, being in the orange zone on the map for Kanawha and the other two counties would mean mandatory face coverings for students in the third grade and older, no large group assemblies and a more concerted effort from local health and school officials to mitigate further disease spread.

For any county in the red, with more than 25 daily average cases per 100,000 people – this was Logan county until Tuesday – in-person classes would be suspended.

In all three orange counties and others currently marked yellow or green, the state was on Wednesday tracking 39 outbreaks in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. It was also monitoring 29 active cases of COVID-19 across four churches and more than 20 positive coronavirus results among prisoners at the Mount Olive Correctional Center in Fayette County.

Outbreaks in state jails, prisons and nursing homes only count as one person in the state’s color-coded map for community spread, except for infected employees, who the governor’s office said on Aug. 17 will count as whole individuals. State health officials have said this is because they fear outbreaks in congregant settings will skew results.

The map has been revised and tweaked at least twice since state officials first introduced it on Aug. 14. A similar, more stringent color-coded map from the Harvard Global Health Institute shows Monroe and Logan counties in the red.

West Virginia has had more than 9,500 cases of COVID-19 since March. More than 1,700 cases are still active, and there were 190 deaths from the coronavirus by Wednesday.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.