The number of West Virginia children in state care spiked to more than 6,000 this month. As the state struggles with a shortage of licensed foster homes, one residential facility will close by the end of the year.
The West Virginia Children’s Home in Elkins houses up to 25 foster children ages 12 to 18, who are deemed unfit for foster or group homes due to behavioral issues, according to the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) website.
But the facility will close by the end of the year, DHHR Deputy Secretary of Children and Adult Services Cammie Chapman confirmed during Gov. Jim Justice’s Nov. 19 virtual press briefing.
In 2023, the DHHR proposed converting the facility into a youth crisis center offering behavioral and mental health services.
DHHR Cabinet Secretary Bill Crouch said at the time that a growing number of children were being admitted to hospitals and emergency rooms “for days and weeks” due to behavioral and mental health concerns.
“This needs to stop,” he said. “We expect this facility to alleviate that need to provide the necessary and appropriate care and treatment of West Virginia’s youth.”
But Chapman said that plans for converting the facility never moved forward, and that the DHHR has instead shifted its focus toward supporting residential facilities already in place.
“We have been exploring over the last few years what a crisis center may look like [and] how it would be operationalized, but the facility has never been utilized as a crisis center,” she said. “We believe that working with our current residential providers is the most effective way and appropriate way to serve the children of the community.”
Photo Credit: WV Governor’s Office
In 2023, DHHR officials raised safety concerns about the Elkins facility to state lawmakers.
During a November 2023 interim committee meeting of the West Virginia Legislature, Department of Human Services Secretary Cynthia Persily said the century-old building might not comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Persily also said that the facility had “a number of exposed pipes” and “life safety issues.”
Lawmakers discussed the possibility of closing the facility outright, but Persily said the West Virginia Code suggests that the state is obligated to operate a facility like the children’s home.
During Tuesday’s press briefing, Chapman did not say whether a different facility in the state would fulfill this requirement for the state. But Justice said that safety concerns surrounding the aging building’s infrastructure played a role in the decision to close it.
“Let me just say this: The building is 100-plus years old, and we tried to do what we could and everything to keep it in order,” he said.
Justice added that the facility would cost millions of dollars to repair. “The building is falling all to pieces,” he said.
Justice also said the facility currently only houses a “really small” amount of children, which made the decision to close the facility “just the right and smart thing to do.”
According to Justice, youth currently living at the West Virginia Children’s Home will be moved to the city of Parsons in Tucker County, located roughly 20 miles away.
