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W.Va Senate Restores $16.9 Million To House Bill Reforming Foster Care

West Virginia senators passed a bill from the House of Delegates on Friday, in an attempt to reform various aspects of the state’s overwhelmed foster care system.

House Bill 4092, as voted on by the Senate, sends roughly $16.9 million to the state Department of Health and Human Resources to implement a tiered system of direct payments to foster families and child-placing agencies.

The legislation also formally adds “kinship caregivers” to state code, referring to adults with an established connection to the child they’re fostering. It includes a list of more than 20 rights for foster children and their caregivers, and it increases accountability related to guardians ad litem, or the attorneys who represent foster children in the judicial system.

The bill now heads back to the House of Delegates. Earlier this week, there was concern in the chamber about plans in the Senate to drastically reduce the bill’s funding to $4.9 million.

“It addresses the crisis that we’re currently in, of being woefully short on foster families,” Del. Jeffrey Pack, R-Raleigh, said of the $16.9 million request on Thursday. “The idea behind increasing the imbursement rate was to help recruit more certified foster families in our system.”

Senate Finance Chair Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, told his chamber on Friday that lawmakers received a “revenue adjustment letter” on Thursday for $20 million.

“It gave us the flexibility for what we had in our budget, to be able to do that,” Blair said.

The House version of the bill increased monthly payments to foster families from $600 to $900, per all children, regardless of need and age.

The Senate version of the bill that passed Friday creates a tiered system to “provide higher payments for foster parents providing care to, and child placing agencies providing services to, foster children who have severe emotional, behavioral or intellectual problems or disabilities.”

In committee testimony, the state Department of Health and Human Resources has said the agency would favor a tiered system, because having different tiers would allow them flexibility to better serve older foster children and children with greater needs, who are often harder to place with families and end up in expensive group facilities, out of state or in some instances juvenile detention.

“For some reason, the department has a much easier time placing infants, very young children, than they do placing teenagers,” Judiciary Chair Charles Trump, R-Morgan, said on the Senate floor Friday. “Children who have problems, or special needs, are especially hard to find homes for. So, as a consequence of that, what we’ve got in West Virginia right now is we have a lot of them in institutional environments … and that’s wrong. Any child that could be put in a home and is put in congregate care in some institution, is not being served in the child’s best interest.”

Marissa Sanders, a member of the West Virginia Foster, Adoptive and Kinship Parents Network, said Friday after the Senate’s vote she was pleased with the body’s decision.

Since interims this year, Sanders has connected lawmakers with foster families and their perspectives. In Pack’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary committee on Tuesday, when senators were considering stripping funds, he said lawmakers began working on House Bill 4092 after reviewing data from Sanders.

“It’s just amazing to see people who have felt like they had no voice, and no real involvement in the process, step up and begin to share their truths,” Sanders said of foster families. “The feeling of being heard by legislators is just absolutely incredible. To look at that bill and see that these things are here because foster families said, “this is what we need,” and they heard us, that’s incredible.”

The bill is going back to the House, where 96 delegates passed an earlier version of the legislation in February. Should the House agree with the Senate’s amendments, the bill goes to Gov. Jim Justice for final approval.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Foster Care Bill Nearing Passage After Senators Continue Tweaking Funding, Foster Childs’ Rights

A bill for foster care reform in the West Virginia Legislature was amended further Wednesday night, before it was sent to the full Senate for consideration.

The Senate Finance Committee voted 10-7 along party lines to pass an amended House Bill 4092, providing at least $4.9 million to the state Department of Health and Human Resources for foster care.

That replaces a line in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s version of the bill, which senators passed along to the Senate Finance Tuesday night, allocating at least $4 million to the DHHR.

The money in the bill is meant to help the DHHR implement a tiered system of direct payments to certified foster parents and kinship caregivers. In that tiered system, higher payments would go to families caring for foster children with severe emotional, behavioral or intellectual needs, and older children who the DHHR says are harder to place than younger children.

Before it reached the Senate, House Bill 4092 didn’t address how payments should differ according to the needs and age of a child. Instead, it simply increased the minimum level of direct payments to foster families from $600 a month to $900 a month, per child. The legislation also provided child-placing agencies with a minimum $75 daily per child, to help the agencies provide more services to foster families.

The DHHR estimated the financial implications of the House version would have cost the state $16.9 million total. As both chambers of the Legislature finalize a budget for 2021, the House still includes that $16.9 line item in its budget request. The Senate does not.

Both chambers’ budgets include another $14.9 million improvement package the DHHR requested earlier this year for social services. According to DHHR Deputy Secretary Jeremiah Samples, the department could implement a tiered payment system, as described in the Senate Finance version of the bill, using this money.

“A tiered model does allow us to build greater capacity than a flat increase,” Samples told senators Wednesday evening.

The DHHR currently is piloting a tiered system in a few West Virginia counties, where child placement agencies and families are paid according to three tiers. The highest tier is reserved for children with the most medical or behavioral needs.

If the DHHR were able to implement the tiered program statewide, Samples said, more families might house older children and kids with greater needs, who the state otherwise sends to expensive out-of-state institutions and group homes. Samples said of the roughly 7,000 children in foster care now, just under 500 have had to leave West Virginia.

“One of the biggest money-losers is … having to send our children out of state, pay[ing] a high price tag,” Sen. Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha, said in committee Wednesday. He suggested that the state would be able to use the money saved to implement the pay raises the House of Delegates called for with the monthly payment increases.

“We can do the same thing with less money,” Takubo said.

Democrats who ultimately voted against passing the Senate Finance version of the bill Wednesday said they wanted to reinstate the monthly payment increases, described in the original House bill.

Sen. William Ihlenfeld, D-Ohio, referred to testimony the committee heard earlier during its Wednesday meeting from Julia Kessler with the West Virginia Children’s Home Society.

“Our foster families do the hardest job in the system that we have,” Kessler said Wednesday night. “They take care of kids with the most difficult problems. We ask them to put their own personal lives aside … they really have the most stressful job of taking care of kids and learning how to deal with the behaviors and the trauma that they come into the home with.”

“We have trouble finding families who want to get involved in the foster care system,” Ihlenfeld said. “I don’t think the flexibility we’ve given to the DHHR in the past has worked. I think it’s time that we need to legislate a little bit. … I think sometimes we have to enforce our will upon agencies to make sure that problems get fixed.”

An amendment from Ihlenfeld to bring back the $900 monthly minimum to foster families failed along party lines.

The Senate Finance bill also maintains many of the changes the Senate Judiciary Committee made on Tuesday to a list of rights for foster parents and children.

The original House bill included 27 rights for children in the foster care system.

The Senate Finance bill downsized that to 21 rights, most notably excluding rights to receive confidential correspondence from biological parents and other family, to have social contacts outside the foster care system, to have storage space for private use, and to be free from unreasonable searches of personal belongings.

Senators agreed Wednesday to reinstate a right allowing foster children to maintain contact with former caregivers and other important adults, which had been removed from the House bill by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

There were 26 rights for foster parents and kinship caregivers in the original House Bill. Now there are 16. Senators on the Judiciary Committee said Tuesday night that was to mitigate any “cause of actions” those rights created for foster parents to sue the state for damages.

Regarding other legislative efforts dealing with foster care issues, the Senate agreed unanimously to pass House Bill 4415 for runaway and missing foster care children on Wednesday. House Bill 4094, elaborating on the responsibilities of a foster care ombudsman created last year, is slated to pass the Senate on Thursday.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

W.Va. Senate Judiciary Advances Foster Care Bill After Stripping House-Requested Funding

A committee in the West Virginia Senate has passed a bipartisan bill from the House of Delegates that would reform the foster care system, but not without significant amendments to the bill’s financial items.

House Bill 4092, as amended by the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday night, provides at least $4 million to the Department of Health and Human Resources to implement a tiered system of per diem payments to certified foster parents and kinship caregivers.

That tiered system would “provide higher payments for foster parents providing care to, and child placing agencies providing services to, foster children who have severe emotional, behavioral or intellectual problems or disabilities.”

Children with greater needs like these and older children are the hardest to place, according to Watts, and often they end up in group home or residential facilities.

“What we heard from families [is], families are willing to take older children,” Linda Watts, commissioner of the Bureau for Children and Families, said Tuesday to the Senate Judiciary Committee. “But they need a little bit more money to do that and, in addition, they need support.”

Previously, the bill increased monthly payments to caregivers from $600 to a minimum of $900, for foster care children of all ages and needs. According to financial estimates from the state DHHR, which oversees Watts’ bureau and the foster care system, those increases would cost the state an additional $3.6 million in 2021.

The DHHR says all of the fiscal items in the House version of the bill would cost in total roughly $16.9 million more from the state. DHHR representatives said Tuesday night they’ll have to assemble new fiscal information for the Senate Judiciary Committee’s updates.

Additional changes to the bill by the Senate Judiciary Committee also focused on rights that would be granted to foster care children and their caregivers.

Sen. Mike Woelfel, D-Cabell, said Tuesday he supported changes to the foster parents bill of rights. He told other senators on the committee he supported removing portions of the original House bill that risked creating a “cause of action” for parents to easily sue the state for money, property or other damages.

Most of the night’s debate was centered around the funding impacts. Sen. Glenn Jeffries, D-Putnam, made a motion to return the original funding to the bill, as approved by the House of Delegates.

The amendment ultimately failed along party lines, 6-10.

“We have money for everything else around here,” Woelfel said, who voted in favor of reinstating the House-requested dollars. “We always find the money when we need it. But there aren’t too many lobbyists out here for these little foster kids.”

During the committee’s debate on the amendment from Jeffries, Sen. Stephen Baldwin, D-Greenbrier, called Del. Jeffrey Pack, R-Raleigh, to testify to the committee.

Pack is a co-sponsor on the bill and serves as vice chair of the House Health and Human Resources Committee.

Before passing the full House of Delegates nearly unanimously, the bill passed three House committees with favorable recommendations.

Pack told Senators he and other delegates drafted House Bill 4092 over the interim session, after considering various complaints from foster families regarding a lack of services available and financial support.

“We considered that we could best address both services and the per diem rate, in a nutshell,” Pack said. “So, what we did was, through a series of discussions, we decided to increase the funding per diem to the child placing agencies.”

In addition to increasing monthly payments to foster families, the DHHR said House Bill 4092 — as originally written — would’ve cost the state an additional $7.5 million for an increase in daily amounts provided to foster child-placing agencies.

According to Pack, that proposed increase was to help these agencies set up support services for foster families that the DHHR cannot.

He added the $900 amount was only the minimum for what the House wanted families to receive.

“We understand some children require higher imbursement rates because of exceptionalities, or they’re harder to place,” Pack told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Ryan Weld, R-Brooke, opposed the amendment from Jeffries to reinstate the House’s $16.9 million funding. He said he thought the Senate Finance Committee would be more qualified to consider the financial aspects of the bill.

“So why did the Judiciary find it in its purview … to remove that funding in the first place?” Baldwin asked Weld. “It came to us with specific amounts, and you said it was best for the [Senate] Finance Committee to deal with the numbers, but we took the numbers out and added new numbers. I don’t understand how that fits within the framework of what you are saying.”

“No,” Weld replied. “No one’s saying that these children aren’t going to receive money for these programs. What I did say — and I think it was taken out of context and misconstrued — was that the financial side of this can be dealt with within the Finance Committee.”

“I’m not against giving increases to kinship relatives, or to the foster care providers,” Watts told senators Tuesday night. “I’m not against an increase. I’m not sure the amount that was set [in the original version of the bill] will get us the building of services that we need for the older kids.”

DHHR Deputy Secretary Jeremiah Samples said the agency still could provide payment plans to families if the amended House Bill succeeds in Senate Finance with the new tier system, the $4 million and an additional $14.9 million the DHHR already has requested for social service improvements.

According to Samples, the DHHR has been piloting a tiered system in certain counties. He said if the program were administered statewide, the state would save more money in the long run by placing older children with more behavioral needs with West Virginia families, instead of costly institutions.

“It doesn’t have to be either or,” Woelfel said in the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday night. He suggested the Senate reinstate the House’s funding and propose an amendment on the Senate floor that calls for the tiered system.

Senators rejected two amendments from Sen. Stephen Baldwin to reinstate items from the former House bill for the foster child’s bill of rights.

One amendment would’ve returned a line from the original House bill, allowing foster children the right to be free from unwarranted physical restraint and isolation.

A second amendment would’ve returned more language from the original bill, allowing foster children to keep in touch with previous caregivers and other important adults to a child, withstanding an order from the court prohibiting that.

“It is my sense that … young people who are in this circumstance, they are experiencing a certain level of trauma, and that trauma is only magnified by the chaos of it,” Baldwin said before his proposed amendment failed. “So, when you’re in that situation, you need anchors. You need guideposts, you need people you can turn to who are safe, you need positive influences in your life.”

House Bill 4092 goes to the Senate Finance Committee next.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Republican Bill For Preexisting Conditions Fails In House Committee

A committee in the West Virginia House of Delegates narrowly voted against passing a Republican bill to protect West Virginians with preexisting conditions, should a federal law currently providing these rights be repealed.

Senate Bill 284 was contingent on the federal government declaring a significant portion of the Affordable Care Act, known commonly as “Obamacare,” unconstitutional.

The ACA prohibits insurance companies from excluding or discriminating against consumers based on their preexisting health conditions, including cancer, diabetes, depression and epilepsy, among other diagnoses.

A federal appeals court panel ruled in favor of a Texas lawsuit last year, agreeing that the ACA violates the U.S. Constitution based on a different section of the law requiring individuals to purchase health insurance. The Supreme Court is not expected to weigh in anytime before the 2020 election.

The House Health and Human Resources Committee on Saturday voted 12-11 against sending the bill to the full House of Delegates for consideration.

Although lawmakers spent a fair amount of time asking committee staff and a representative from the attorney general’s office about the bill, there was no debate before their vote.

Delegates on both sides of the aisle raised questions about the bill’s unclear cost. The legislation called on the state Insurance Commissioner to create a reinsurance program that would assist health insurance companies covering individuals with serious and costly health care needs, but the bill didn’t specify how the state would pay for this program.

Democrats focused several of their questions on state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and his role in the Texas lawsuit threatening the ACA’s existence.

Morrisey was one of several other Republican attorneys general in 2018 to he join a lawsuit challenging the ACA in a U.S. District Court in Texas. West Virginia Deputy Solicitor General Thomas Johnson — who works in Morrisey’s office — told delegates on Saturday that was due to reportedly increasing cost of premiums.

Health experts paint changes in health care spending as more complicated than just increasing premiums.

Del. Mick Bates, D-Raleigh, voted against the bill on Saturday, saying the bill did nothing to protect West Virginians with preexisting conditions.

“The only one it protected was the attorney general, who filed the lawsuit against Obamacare for political reasons and had the Republican leadership run this bill so he had political cover,” Bates said in a text message to West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

The Health committee made its decision less than a week after the bill cleared the full Senate on Tuesday, Feb. 25, after passing two Senate committee references.

A second bill — a proposal from Senate Democrats — seeking to protect West Virginians with preexisting conditions was never acted upon and missed a key legislative deadline.

Both bills are unlikely to return, after delegates rejected a motion to reconsider the Republican sponsored Senate Bill 284 toward the end of the Health committee meeting.

A spokesman for Morrisey’s office did not respond to a request for comment Saturday evening.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

W.Va. Delegates Amend Intermediate Court Bill To Include Criminal Appeals

A bill to create an intermediate court of appeals in West Virginia passed the House Judiciary Committee Friday with a few noteworthy changes and, ultimately, a favorable recommendation.

Republicans say the creation of an intermediate court will speed up the judicial process in West Virginia, where the state Supreme Court is the only entity accepting appeals to lower court decisions. The majority party has argued an accelerated appeals process could in turn attract more businesses to the state and benefit smaller, local businesses struggling with litigation.

Democrats, on the other hand, question whether creating an intermediate court will actually expedite the appeals process or just add an extra and costly step. As lawmakers turn their focus to the upcoming fiscal year’s budget, the minority party also asked on Friday whether an intermediate court is worth the investment.

Senate Bill 275 was sent to the House Judiciary Committee after the Senate voted 23 to 11 to pass the bill. A day before the vote, Sen. William Ihlenfeld, D-Ohio, unsuccessfully attempted to amend the bill to include criminal appeals.

That amendment, proposed this time by a Republican, made it into the House Judiciary version of the bill Friday night. Delegates agreed unanimously to accept the amendment from Del. Brandon Steele, R-Raleigh, even though the committee later disagreed along party lines when it came to passing the entire bill.

“I don’t think this is going to increase cost much,” Steele said of his amendment. “And in what I have to say about this is, to me, this is the right way to do it. And I would rather pay a little bit more to do it the right way and pay less and do it the wrong way.”

Information from the state’s Public Defender Services estimates adding criminal cases will increase what the state spends on hiring private attorneys by $1.2 million annually.

The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals says creating the entire court would cost about $7.5 million in its first year and then about $6.3 million annually. The Consolidated Public Retirement Board projects an annual price tag of $55,000 for judges’ benefits.

On Friday, delegates in the House Judiciary Committee also agreed to amend the bill to delay implementation (and spending) on the intermediate court until 2023.

While debating the bill, Del. Chad Lovejoy, D-Cabell, said creating an intermediate court likely will cost more than lawmakers expect. Referring to information the committee heard earlier on Friday, he added that appeals have declined over the years in West Virginia, one of nine low-population states without an intermediate court of appeals.

House Judiciary Vice Chair Moore Capito, R-Kanawha, said that Republican lawmakers took a “toe in the water approach” when it came to budgeting for the intermediate court.

“We’ve pushed that data out, we’ve given the folks that are going to be impacted by this, the folks that are going to stand up this program, a chance to look at it, and ultimately, give us a better idea of what it costs,” Capito said.

An amendment from Steele to specify placement of the court — one location serving a Southern District in Beckley and another to take cases in a Northern District in Clarksburg — also succeeded.

A proposal from Del. Joe Canestraro, D-Marshall, to amend the bill so that child welfare actions, including juvenile offenses and abuse and neglect cases, are appealed to the intermediate court, failed 12-13.

Capito was one of the delegates who spoke against the proposal.

“We’re dealing with extremely vulnerable individuals in our society, who need the most expedited appeal available to them,” Capito said.

“If we’re dealing with the most vulnerable citizens in our society, then we should give them a quicker appeal right to an intermediate court first,” Canestraro said. “I think our children are more important than any business aspect being able to be appealed here.”

Del. Andrew Robinson, D-Kanawha, later used this exchange to question who the intermediate court system will actually be faster for.

“I can’t figure out what the exact reason for this court is. When we discuss it, we say it’s fast or it’s slow, and we argue back and forth,” Robinson said. “… Do we really know what we’re doing here?”

While the bill is still set for consideration in House Finance next, Republican leadership could still decide to waive that reference.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

W.Va. Senate Passes Bill To Cover Preexisting Conditions, Should Obamacare be Repealed

The West Virginia Senate passed a bill on Tuesday that seeks to protect West Virginians with preexisting health conditions, in the event the federal law that currently provides those protections is repealed.

Senate Bill 284 is on its way to the state’s House of Delegates after passing the Senate 20 to 14 Tuesday afternoon, along party lines. The legislation would only go into effect if the federal Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” was repealed.

The bill’s lead sponsor is Sen. President Mitch Carmichael, R-Jackson, and it has support from West Virginia’s Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. Morrisey joined a lawsuit with other Republican attorneys general in 2018 to repeal the ACA’s individual mandate to purchase health insurance.

The bill would require the state’s insurance commissioner, currently James Dodrill, to issue a public notice when the federal government has determined “all or a significant portion” of the ACA in unconstitutional.

Dodrill and other West Virginia health officials will then work on creating a reinsurance program, to support health insurance companies caring for individuals who, due to a serious health condition, have high health care costs.

The bill doesn’t specify a method for funding that reinsurance program, but it allows the state to study the implementation of a high-risk pool.

West Virginia was one of several states operating a high-risk pool before the ACA began. Some experts have said these pools were more expensive to the people who benefited from them than they were helpful.

Morrisey has said in numerous interviews and press conferences he joined the ACA lawsuit in 2018 due to “skyrocketing” premiums and concerns over constitutional rights.

Several groups advocating for affordable health care have said a repeal of the ACA would affect people with preexisting conditions, if there’s not a backup plan in place.

One of the bill’s opponents — Sen. Richard Lindsay, D-Kanawha — said in a Feb. 13 interview with West Virginia Public Broadcasting the reinsurance program, depending on how its funded, could lead to higher premiums across the state.

Lindsay spoke against the bill on Tuesday in his remarks to the full Senate, saying the Morrisey-supported bill was unfair to people with preexisting conditions who benefit from the ACA.

“It would be analogous to having a three floor house with six bedrooms and four bathrooms,” Lindsay said, “and an individual burning it down to the ground, and forcing you to buy a house from him that’s half the size with very little space.”

He also opposed the bill because the Senate didn’t take up a Democrat-led bill, a shorter proposal which was introduced to protect people with preexisting conditions. That bill also didn’t address funding mechanisms.

A federal appeals court in New Orleans in December decided the individual coverage mandate in the ACA was unconstitutional. The federal court returned the case to a lower court in Texas who ruled the same thing months earlier, to determine how much of the ACA contradicts the U.S. Constitution, and what — in the court’s opinion — should be repealed.

If the law is repealed, West Virginians also risk losing ACA-provided subsidies to pay for personal insurance.

A report from West Virginia MetroNews in October said 22,600 West Virginians were enrolled in the state’s health insurance exchange last year. Eighty-eight percent of this population received subsidies in some amount, to pay for these plans.

Senate Bill 284’s provisions for people with preexisting conditions only applies to West Virginians under the state’s jurisdiction, who purchase their insurance independently. The bill doesn’t do anything for West Virginians covered by Medicare, Medicaid, or private employment-based health benefits for companies which self insure.

The legislation has been assigned to the House Health and Human Resources Committee for consideration.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.