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Expert: W.Va.’s Drug Epidemic Is Holding Back Its Economy And Hurting Its Children

A senior policy advisor to the Legislature presented a sobering picture of West Virginia’s drug epidemic on Monday.

Despite the state’s billion dollar response, West Virginia has led the nation in overdose death rates since 2010, according to a senior policy advisor to the legislature.

Jeremiah Samples, former deputy secretary at the now reorganized Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) and current senior policy advisor to the Legislature, presented an analysis of the state’s substance use disorder (SUD) crisis to the Joint Committee on Health on Monday.

“The bottom line is that we have not made enough progress on this crisis,” Samples said. “We’re nowhere near where we need to be, and our data relative to other states, and even our own expectations, has fallen far short. We need to reassess all of our SUD strategies and expenditures through the prism of what is impacting real people in our society.”

A survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) estimates that 208,000 people in West Virginia used illicit drugs in the last month.

“That’s an average,” Samples said of the number. “It’s a gut-wrenching number to hear, but that’s where we stand.”

Samples also cited a West Virginia University Match Survey that found 359,880 West Virginians used drugs in the past year.

“We can’t sustain that as a society,” Samples said. “That is, it’s crippling to the state.”

In 2010, West Virginia’s fatal overdose death rate per 100,000 people was 28.2. Even after the state spent millions combating the problem, in 2022, West Virginia’s fatal overdose death rate had grown to 80.9 per 100,000 people.

“Our overdose death rate since 2010 has increased by 135 percent,” Samples told the committee. “West Virginia’s overdose death rate is 151 percent higher than the best state in the country, 85.6 percent higher than the national average and 36.4 percent higher than the next worst state (Tennessee).”

Samples cautioned against taking overdose death reports out of context.

“Any downturn is positive,” Samples said. “Those are real lives that people, that are not dying. However, the trend, we’ve had a couple blips where we’ve gone down in the past, but the trends are really what matter, and from a trend perspective, we have increased exponentially since we started leading the nation in overdose deaths.”

According to CDC data, the nation saw a 6.7 percent decrease in overdoses from January 2023 to January 2024. During that same period, West Virginia saw a 1.92 percent increase in overdoses.

“West Virginia is not keeping pace with the decrease in other states,” Samples said. “Before the pandemic, we were at a plateau of sorts. The pandemic hits and fentanyl issues become exponentially worse. Overdose death rates across the country explode. They increased in West Virginia, more so than most states. I think we were perhaps third, we saw the third biggest increase during the pandemic. But the bottom line is, we’re not decreasing at the same rate as some of these other states. So we’re not coming back down to that plateau. We need to get to that plateau and then continue to go down.”

The Current System

Samples explained that West Virginia’s state government response involves “over a dozen agencies,” led by the Governor’s Council on Substance Abuse, founded in 2018, and the Office of Drug Control Policy (ODCP), founded in 2017.

One of those agencies is the Bureau for Behavioral Health (BBH), the designated state mental health authority recognized by the federal government as the single state agency for substance abuse services.

The bureau receives federal block grant funding for substance abuse and prevention. It is responsible for SUD provider infrastructure and manages the state’s Crisis and Referral Line, 1-844-HELP4WV, contract.

“They (BBH) apply for these big federal grants,” Samples said. “They’re responsible for the infrastructure of the state for SUD and their annual budget is roughly $225 million.”

Samples said from 2017 to 2020, BBH was forced to send $34.2 million back to the federal government for funds that were not used from those grants.

“This came up in LOCHHRA (Legislative Oversight Commission on Health and Human Resources Accountability) last year,” Samples said. “We’re unclear from 2021 forward, how much money has been sent back, but it is something that the legislature and the state should explore and investigate.”

In 2023, legislation was passed directing the ODCP to report to the governor’s office. In the DHHR reorganization, the ODCP was placed administratively within the Department of Human Services.

Samples said it is hard to track SUD spending in West Virginia, but the state fiscal year 2025 budget for the ODCP is $2.3 million.

“You can directly attribute hundreds of millions again, in direct expenditures on SUD, just in West Virginia, annually,” Samples said. “And then there’s hundreds of millions more we know that we’re spending that are indirect, for example, child protective services, the child welfare crisis, there are hundreds of millions in indirect costs in just child welfare alone.”

A 2021 study that includes the economic impacts of the crisis by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy estimated that the drug crisis costs West Virginia $11.3 billion a year.

Samples also cited a Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that found West Virginia experienced 1,335 known overdose deaths in 2022.

“Despite all the investment and expenditure, since 1999 we’ve seen a 1,680 percent increase in our overdose death rate,” Samples said. “Since 2010 which, again, 2010 is when we started leading the nation, [we’ve seen] a 135 percent increase. Since 2017, [we’ve seen] a 56 percent increase. So we have not been getting results. We’ve not been reversing the trend.”

According to Samples, Medicaid is the largest source of treatment funding for SUD in the state, serving approximately 50,000 members with an SUD diagnosis annually.

Medicaid is expected to spend about $140 million on SUD medical and behavioral health claims in West Virginia in 2025. In addition, Medicaid spends approximately $70 million on medication-assisted treatment (MAT) drugs.

“Medicaid’s annual expenditure, when you include MAT and the services, the claims are about $210 million,” Samples said. “Fatal overdoses have increased amongst the Medicaid population from 2018 to 2020, and so we’ve not seen appropriate progress there either.”

West Virginia Medicaid’s Substance Use Disorder Waiver

Since the launch of West Virginia’s Medicaid SUD Waiver, or 1115 Waiver, fatal overdose rates have continued to rise.

West Virginia Medicaid’s biggest SUD expenditure is the 1115 Waiver, which was developed to help increase the availability of SUD prevention and treatment services for Medicaid members.

The waiver was requested by the state and approved in 2017 by the federal government. It allows the state to provide additional services beyond what the federal government requires.

In 2018, the Bureau for Medical Services announced the expansion of services under the SUD Waiver, adding coverage of methadone as a withdrawal management strategy, a Naloxone distribution initiative, coverage of adult residential treatment, peer recovery support systems, withdrawal management services and the use of the Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) tool to identify SUD treatment needs in the Medicaid community.

The SUD Waiver cost $12.2 million in 2019 and increased to $129.3 million by 2023. The Federal Reserve was responsible for $114 million of the 2023 total. West Virginia paid $15.3 million the same year.

Projected expenditures in 2027 are expected to grow to $161 million, according to Samples.

West Virginia Medicaid has proposed further expansion of the SUD waiver to the federal government. The application is under review with the expiration of the current waiver on September 30, 2024.

Proposed expansions include:

Expanding peer support to more settings
Sending quick response teams to clients who have overdosed or are experiencing a crisis
Providing Medicaid coverage to eligible individuals incarcerated in state prisons starting 30 days before their release
Offering involuntary secure withdrawal management and stabilization for individuals deemed to be a danger to themselves or others
Supporting a holistic and integrated approach to treatment
Education and outreach for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Hepatitis C (HCV) concerning substance use
Addressing social determinants of health to encourage self-reliance and support continued recovery housing offering clinical-level treatment services.
Supported house and supported employment
Offering the TRUST protocol for people with stimulant use disorders
Reimbursing short-term residential and inpatient treatment services in settings that qualify as an institution that treats mental diseases for Medicaid-eligible adults with serious mental illnesses.

West Virginia’s SUD Outcomes

Samples then shared some encouraging outcomes with the committee from this spending.

According to CDC provisional data, there was a decrease of 9.4 percent in overdose deaths nationally from March 2023 to March 2024. In West Virginia, that same data showed a decrease of 4.91 percent during the same time period.

Samples also cited a decrease in new HIV cases from 153 in 2021 to 100 in 2023.

“This was a really big deal a couple of years ago, Kanawha County alone, which was one of the worst hit counties, saw a 66 percent decrease from 2021 to 2023,” he said. “The 2024 data, which is available online, it’s looking really good. It’s actually even more positive than that. So kudos to everyone that’s worked on that.”

According to a 2022 report from the CDC, 2,400 people were living with HIV in West Virginia.

“Other positives, Medicaid, managed care organizations, providers, recovery homes, they’re starting to make a lot of progress in better measuring our outcomes, better measuring what’s actually happening in the state, so we can pivot and actually make progress on this crisis,” Samples said.

Samples also said he is hopeful about the West Virginia First Foundation, the organization formed by an act of the legislature that is responsible for dispersing West Virginia’s opioid settlement funds.

“The first foundation, this is a new development and something that I think we should have hope for. The foundation stems from efforts by the Attorney General Patrick Morrissey, securing an opioid settlement of approximately $1 billion,” Samples said. “This is the number one per capita opioid settlement in the United States.”

Drugs And Economics

While there are some positive indicators for the future of West Virginia’s drug epidemic, Samples said the state has not had any significant successes but has seen plenty of failure.

“The failures have consequences, the economic impact of the drug crisis,” Samples said. “One study said $8.8 billion a year in impact. Another study said $11.3 billion a year in impact, just on the economy, a 12 percent economic drag on our GDP (Gross Domestic Product), annually.”

Samples said the drug crisis costs West Virginia at least one-eighth of the state’s total economy based on spending on health care, substance use treatment, criminal justice costs, the societal burden of fatal overdoses and lost worker productivity.

The “drag” on West Virginia’s GDP is more than double that of the next highest state, Maryland where substance use disorder-related costs consumed 5.4 percent of its GDP.

Then, Samples addressed West Virginia’s labor workforce participation rate (LFPR), or, the number of people in the labor force (working or looking for work) as a percentage of the total population 16 years and older. West Virginia’s LFPR is at 55.1 percent in July 2024, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve.

“We’re no longer last, and I don’t say that in jest,” Samples said. “I mean, we were last place in labor force participation rate from 1976 to 2022, so progress is progress, and we are making some progress in that realm, but the drug crisis is holding us back.”

According to Samples, the economic impact of productivity loss for non-fatal substance use disorders has a reported cost of $316 million dollars and 1,206 jobs to the state, while the economic impact of productivity loss due to overdose fatalities carries an additional cost of $322 million and 5,905 jobs.

“When you look at the unemployment rate, which is at 4.2 percent right now, relative to our labor force participation rate, our labor force participation rate has pretty much been level, but our unemployment rate has gone down,” Samples said. “There’s just people not in the job market looking for work, and this is attributable to the drug crisis.”

West Virginia has the highest death rate for working-aged populations and the second lowest life expectancy in the U.S. at 72.8.

“Even going back to 1990 West Virginia has had a lower life expectancy than the national average, but there’s been a gap that’s built, and even as the national life expectancy has gone down, we’ve gone down more,” Samples said.

West Virginia’s Children Pay A Price

According to Samples’ report, 83 percent of child welfare removals were from homes with known drug use.

“West Virginia’s foster care rate grew 61 percent from 2010, to 2021,” Samples said. “It’s 23 percent higher than the next worst state, and 118 percent higher than the national average.”

Data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows that West Virginia leads the nation in its foster care entry rate.

“The difference between the entry rate and the foster care rate, entry foster care rate, is just kids in foster care,” Samples said. “The entry rate is kids coming in.”

Samples said West Virginia has led the nation in foster care entry rates since 2010.

“We are 131 percent worse than the national average, and 54.9 percent worse than the next worst state in foster care entry rates, and that’s Alaska,” Samples said.

In 2000, six out of every 1,000 West Virginia children entered foster care. In 2021, 13 out of every 1,000 West Virginia children entered foster care. West Virginia’s entry rate increased 117 percent from 2000 to 2021.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families Administration on Children, Youth and Families Children’s Bureau, in 2020, West Virginia had the highest percentage of children nationally suffering from substantiated maltreatment with drug abuse by the caregiver.

2020 CDC data also showed West Virginia had the highest rate nationally of infants screened in by Child Protective Services (CPS) with prenatal substance exposure.

Also in 2020, there were 712 babies screened in by CPS in West Virginia with drug exposure, compared to 526 babies screened in California, which has a population of 39.5 million people. West Virginia has a population of 1.7 million people.

“We only have about 17,000 babies born in the state a year,” Samples said. “It’s not a lot. If you extrapolate from our birth score numbers, then you’re looking at and not just the difference between neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) and in uterine substance exposure. NAS is worse. The babies basically full-blown addicted, is kind of the simple way to say it. we’re looking at around 2,500 babies every year that are exposed to drugs in the womb.”

The Future

In his final address to the legislature, Samples told lawmakers West Virginia’s drug epidemic response needs to be reevaluated.

“The most important thing we need to do, in my opinion, is we need to measure what matters so that we can then pivot and organically improve our response to this crisis,” Samples said. “We need to measure every aspect of our substance use disorder policies and expenditures, and we need to tie it back to a core societal measure.”

Samples left lawmakers with a list of proposed policy solutions including:

Mandatory Treatment (Casey’s Law)
SUD Transparency Act: SUD Outcome and Expenditure Dashboard
Save Babies from Drugs Act
Improve CPS Management of Cases with Drug Addiction
Measure Outcomes of Recovery Homes
Analysis of syringe exchange outcomes and criminal penalties for illegal needle distribution
Enhanced drug testing and SUD services for those on government benefits
SUD Relocation Supports
Public Reporting on SUD expenditures and program outcomes
Expenditure and Opportunities Audit:
Ending Addiction Amongst Inmate Population
Expand Inmate SUD Services via RSAT and GOALS programs
Develop a ratio of law enforcement needs across communities and increase funding for more officers

“Our economy still struggling, I would propose that really we look at 10 core measures and that we use a smarter approach, which is really just an acronym for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time, evaluated and resourced,” Samples said.

Samples said he is “leaving the legislature next month,” but offered no further information after thanking legislative staff and lawmakers.

“It’s been an honor,” Samples said. “The President and the Speaker have been great to me. You all have been great to me. You know you’re wonderful people, and I’ll just always be available to you, should you need anything. I believe in this body, and I believe what you do, and I believe in your hearts.”

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Marshall Health.

Lawmakers Weigh Opioid Treatment Options

Legislators heard from board members of the private donation-funded opioid treatment center Lauren’s Wish during the first interim session this week.

Between March 2021 and March 2022, West Virginia reported 1,403 fentanyl overdoses. In 2021 alone, there were 1,253 opioid overdose deaths in West Virginia, 83 percent of which were fentanyl-related.

Ed Boyle, director of Facilities at Lauren’s Wish, said his organization’s board members, all of whom have been affected by the state’s opioid crisis, found a gap in the opioid overdose recovery process.

“Through this pain and recovery process, these six directors met over a year-long process of studying where as a society we seem to be failing the youth of this state and our communities,” Boyle said. “We came up with the idea of Lauren’s Wish Addiction Triage Center.”

When an individual overdoses and is taken to the emergency room, they are given Narcan and stabilized. Some hospitals have peer recovery coaches to set the person up with a bed in a treatment center, but that bed might not be available for a week or more. That leaves the hospital to discharge the patient back into the environment in which they overdosed.

Boyle said the board of directors at Lauren’s Wish termed the pattern, “treat and street.” To avoid this cycle, Lauren’s Wish Addiction Triage Center was opened as a 28-bed facility at Hazel’s House of Hope in Morgantown.

Dr. Kevin Blankenship is the Medical Services Director of Lauren’s Wish and founder of Jacob’s Ladder, another private patient-centered recovery program located in Aurora, West Virginia.

“We’ve got lots of beds available in West Virginia but most of those are 30-day programs, at best,” Blankenship said. “What I saw was missing was long-term treatment and that’s what Jacob’s Ladder is. Jacob’s Ladder is a six-month treatment program, that then transitions into another three to six months of sober living. The reason for that is because addiction takes time to heal from. Your brain can heal from this, but you’ve got to give it the right environment.”

Blankenship noted the same gap in treatment between an overdose treatment in an emergency room and treatment and recovery bed availability. He also said 28 days is not enough time to heal from opioid addiction.

“If you’re a doctor or a lawyer or an airline pilot, you’ll be entered into a program for two to five years for your addiction, right? For everybody else 30 days, you should be good,” Blankenship said. “They’re not good and we’re not planning for them after they’re done with their 28-day program. So the program itself is too short. There’s nowhere for them to go afterward.”

Programs like Lauren’s Wish and Jacob’s Ladder need to be duplicated throughout the state, Blankenship recommended to lawmakers.

“This is a necessary program,” Blankenship said. “You probably need four or five of these around our state, regionally located so that different ERs and hospital systems can take advantage of that. It’ll take a load off of our EMS system, it’ll take a load off of our ERs, the folks in there can take care of the heart attacks and the brain bleeds that are coming into the door, instead of devoting all their time to this.”

According to Boyle, Lauren’s Wish has had 152 clients go through their system and be placed in an aftercare or recovery process like a sobering center or medium or short-term rehabilitation stays.

Blankenship said the Jacob’s Ladder program has been in existence for seven years and has a success rate of 75 percent. He credits the program’s success to the time they give their patients to heal, noting the first two weeks of a 28-day stay would be spent in withdrawal.

“There’s something to be said about time when you’re talking about healing the brain and that’s what addiction is, it’s a brain disorder that can be healed with time and the appropriate treatment,” Blankenship said.

Del. Heather Tully, R-Nicholas, asked Blankenship how Jacob’s Ladder is able to keep track of their patients years into their recovery in order to study the outcomes of this type of treatment.

Blankenship credited the strength of the alumni community of Jacob’s Ladder for a portion of their long-term success but also noted the organization has weekly and monthly contact with each person and is able to tell if they’ve relapsed or struggling.

“That doesn’t mean that none of them relapse,” Blankenship said. “The difference in a relapse from a graduate from Jacob’s Ladder, for instance, versus someone who had spent 28 days, is you find out about it immediately, as soon as they use they’ve picked up the phone, someone’s noticed something, they didn’t make a meeting, they didn’t make a commitment that they had. We know pretty early on. And it’s so much easier to deal with that type of a bump in the road, rather than a full-blown relapse, where you’re out six months, using again.”

Blankenship said the cycle of the 28-day treatment model is inefficient and costly.

“The unfortunate part about the 28-day [treatment], and I hate to even suggest this, but they’re incentivized to have folks relapsed and come back because they can just keep billing, you know, you can’t go for longer than 28 days,” Blankenship said. “But if you relapse next week, come back, I got four more weeks I can bill for. So they don’t really have the incentive to make sure that these folks are out there doing healthy things for the next 10 years, which is what our goal is.”

Del. Amy Summers, R-Taylor, referenced a presentation from an earlier meeting of the Legislative Oversight Commission on Health and Human Resources in which Cindy Beane, commissioner of the Bureau for Medical Services, testified to the implementation of Senate Bill 419 from the 2022 West Virginia Legislative session.

“It’s very difficult for a residential provider to basically track that person who is now not even in the county that they treated the person in a whole other county that might be across the state,” Beane said. “So it’s very difficult for the expectation of the bill for somebody to basically track somebody three years down the road.”

Senate Bill 419 directed the state Department of Health and Human Resources, through the Bureau for Medical Services, to establish a pilot project to evaluate the impact of certain post-substance use disorder residential treatments in West Virginia.

“We had a presentation yesterday through a committee where recovery treatment centers, as you say, are possibly incentivized to have people come back because that’s how they make money,” Summers said. “They think that it’s too difficult to be able to follow people because they say when they leave, they leave and they don’t have the technology to do it. It sounds like you make a phone call.”

Blankenship said the graduates of Jacob’s Ladder are like a family and schedule face-to-face time with one another to check in for coffee or lunch. Also, to enter into the program, the person has to be serious about their recovery. He also noted that 80 percent of people who go through a 28-day program will relapse within three months.

New Foundation Will Distribute Opioid Trial Settlement Funds

The newly formed West Virginia First Foundation will distribute settlement funds from lawsuits against opioid makers and distributors.

It will handle 72.5 percent of the state’s settlement funds, while 24.5 percent would go to local governments. The remaining 3 percent will be held by the state in escrow.

Senate Bill 674 legally recognizes the creation of the foundation, which was announced last month by Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. Gov. Jim Justice signed the bill Wednesday.

“We can expand treatment, we can provide evidence-based substance use prevention through this foundation,” Morrisey said during a live stream of the bill’s signing. “We’ll actually help ensure that the laws in our state are better enforced.”

The foundation board will include eleven board members. The governor will appoint five, and six will be selected by local governments across designated regions. Each board member would serve a three year term.

All 55 counties and 221 of West Virginia’s 229 cities have signed the foundation’s Memorandum of Understanding, which also establishes the six regions to be represented in the foundation’s board. An executive director will also be named to run the foundation’s daily operations.

In January, Morrisey announced the state had settled for $83 million with the pharmacy store chain Walgreens. Walmart and CVS Pharmacy settled with West Virginia in September for a combined total of $147 million, and a similar settlement for $400 million was reached in August with the nation’s “big three” opioid distributors: AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson.

“We know that the opioid epidemic has been one of the great challenges of our time, we know that there’s been a lot of senseless death,” Morrisey said. “The bill being signed today marks a tremendous point in time in our effort to fight back against this terrible crisis.”

West Virginia is also set to take grocery store chain Kroger to trial in June.

Veteran Law Enforcement Officers Now Included In Alzheimer’s Awareness Training Bill

On Alzheimer’s Awareness Day at the West Virginia Legislature, the organization’s program director Terresa Morris said that more than half of those with the brain disorder affecting memory and behavior will – at one time or another – wander.

About 40,000 West Virginians live with some degree of Alzheimer’s dementia, according to the West Virginia chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association. There has been concern that recent legislation focused on law enforcement interacting with those suffering with Alzheimer’s did not go far enough.

Senate Bill 570 was signed into law in 2022. The measure required all new law enforcement and correction officers to undergo specialized training in how to identify and communicate with those living with dementia. Morris said that training proved as an eye opener for new recruits.

“When we talk about stories of people in the past that have had situations like this, I think it’s something that our new officers don’t always think about,” Morris said. “They just know that’s not what they’re taught, per se, so currently, we’re doing that through training at the State Academy for all the new officers.”

That law made Alzheimer’s awareness training voluntary for law enforcement and correction officers already on the force. However, few veterans stepped up to take the training.

Currently proposed Senate Bill 208 mandates that all law enforcement officers, new and old, take Alzheimer’s awareness training.

Morris said with stories of first responder confusion over intoxication vs. dementia still coming to light, across the board training becomes a community help as well.

“This is something fairly new,” Morris said. “We’re just at the point where we have increased awareness of dementia and Alzheimer’s and someone that maybe has been in the force five, 10, 20 years – they need this training, they need to know what they could potentially be dealt with or what they could be working with.”

The training also includes understanding the risks associated with Alzheimer’s, including elder abuse and exploitation.

With Alzheimer’s activists in attendance, the Senate suspended rules Thursday and passed Senate Bill 526, which would incorporate early detection, diagnosis and education efforts regarding dementia on its public health platforms. That bill now goes to the House of Delegates for consideration.

House Passes Transportation Requirement For SUD Facilities

Residential substance use disorder service facilities will be required to offer discharged patients a way home if Senate Bill 243 passes the Senate.

Residential substance use disorder (SUD) service facilities will be required to offer discharged patients a way home if Senate Bill 243 is approved into law.

SB 243 would require transportation back to a person’s place of birth, or other location where the individual has ties.

Opponents of the bill argue that it is unnecessary and a non-issue.

Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, spoke against the bill on the House floor Wednesday. He said because the bill was considered by a Select Committee that met early in the morning, most lawmakers on the floor were unfamiliar with the legislation.

“Not many of you have seen this bill, I would imagine, because it passed through one select committee and then came directly to the floor. It’s not really clear, really what type of facility this would apply to,” Pushkin said. “But I would say with my familiarity with it, that it would only apply to treatment beds, it doesn’t apply to recovery beds, it only applies to facilities that actually can bill Medicaid.”

While speaking in opposition to SB 243, Pushkin told lawmakers that West Virginia already contracts with a company called Modivcare that provides transportation for Medicaid members.

“And the good news is, well, they’re already doing what we’re asking them to do in this bill,” Pushkin said. “We’re already doing it. What the bill now does, though, says you get 30 miles into a neighboring state, you got to kick them out of the vehicle.”

Pushkin said he thinks the bill is based on a false premise that West Virginia’s substance use issues are coming from outside of the state.

“And, unfortunately, that’s not the case. But see, when you blame other things outside of your control for your problems, I guess that absolves you from the responsibility of actually having to do something about it. So this bill is unnecessary,” Pushkin said.

No lawmakers argued in favor of SB 243 on the House floor Wednesday.

The bill passed the House of Delegates with a vote of 82 ayes, 13 nays and five absent or not voting.

SB 243 now returns to the Senate for further consideration.

Nicholas County Program Celebrates Parents' Sobriety, Reunification With Their Kids

Family Treatment Court is an innovative program that reunifies families amid the state’s foster care crisis and the drug epidemic.

The courtroom in Nicholas County was packed Thursday as 10 parents graduated from the county’s Family Treatment Court program.

Large, framed portraits of the graduates and their respective families lined the front of the courthouse — the parents’ and kids’ smiles on display to show the room that their families were now whole.

Family Treatment Court is an innovative program that reunifies families amid the state’s foster care crisis and drug epidemic, two problems that are interwoven in West Virginia.

Under the program, parents who have completed substance use disorder treatment, and other requirements, are reunited with their children after being involved in the child welfare system.

“It’s kind of the people who have that drug problem and come into these cases and make that admission, ‘Hey this is something that is not right, and I need to improve on it,’” said Stephanie Smith, family treatment court case coordinator. She said meth has been the most common drug in the county.

“They also have to be willing — that’s kind of the biggest part,” she added.

Nicholas County is the fifth county in the state selected by the state Supreme Court of Appeals to run a grant-funded Family Treatment Court Program.

Nearly 30 people are involved in running the program, including child protective services workers and employees from the local school system.

One of the program’s goals is to minimize the time kids spend in foster care as West Virginia has the highest rate in the country of kids coming into foster care.

Twenty children were reunified with their parents following Thursday’s graduation, and many of the kids were in the courtroom for the ceremony.

Summersville resident Ally Carpenter, 27, has been drug and alcohol free for 275 days with the program. After finding housing and a job, and completing the program’s other requirements, she was reunited with her 11-month-old son and graduated from Family Treatment Court.

“Everyone here was willing to work with you one on one and whatever it took to get your child back quicker,” Carpenter said. “It’s really done a lot of good and put a lot of children back in the homes of parents who wanted them.”

Judge Stephen Callaghan fought to bring the program to his county and, since its launch in 2020, it now has 39 graduates and has reunited 63 children with their parents.

“We do it because of what you just saw in the courtroom. I’m proud to say that we’re one county and one judge, and at times this fall, we’ve had the largest family treatment court in the state,” Callaghan said.

Former graduates attended the ceremony, cheering as men and women received their certificates. Callaghan explained that it’s a community-wide effort to run the program, including finding housing, furniture, treatment and jobs for participants. Smith noted that finding housing is often the biggest barrier in the rural county.

A local business owner who has employed several of the program participants attended the graduation, and Callaghan said the tight-knit community is more than willing to give.

“It’s so easy to get people involved because all you have to do is say, ‘Do you want to help people and families affected by drugs?’ Who would say no to that?” he said.

Carpenter had a big smile as she held her son in the courtroom during her graduation. She said the program has provided her with good friends and an ongoing support system as she begins community college next month.

“I’m going to be a vet tech and then eventually hopefully become a vet,” she said.