West Virginia Foster Care System Story Archives - Page 2 of 4

W.Va. House Democrats Call For Special Session To Remedy Multiple Crises

The caucus suggests the session focus on the state’s corrections and foster care employment shortfalls and what they call a higher education funding crisis.

In a letter delivered Tuesday to Gov. Jim Justice, the House Democratic Caucus urged the chief executive to call a Special Legislative Session during the August interim meetings.

The caucus suggests the session focus on the state’s corrections and foster care employment shortfalls and what they call a higher education funding crisis.

The letter reads:

“With the surplus that you (Justice) announced this month, we should address these challenges that for far too long have gone unaddressed. A $1.8 billion surplus doesn’t do much good for the 8,000 children in foster care if we don’t act to help them. The surplus won’t help our colleges and universities offset their shortfalls if we don’t act to help them. And the surplus won’t help our struggling corrections workers if we don’t act to help them by finally adjusting their outdated pay scale.”

House Minority Leader Doug Skaff, D-Kanawha, said these are all non-partisan issues.

“Regardless, if you’re a D or an R, it’s about helping West Virginians,” Skaff said. “Whether it’s higher education and our students, or those trying to find people to fill all the vacancies in our correctional facilities. We’ve got to quit kicking the can down the road. It’s going to continue to get worse. I know for a fact there’s, there’s institutions of higher learning right now deciding if they’re even going to be open this fall or not.”

Justice has said he wants a consensus before talks on corrections and has talked of progress in foster care hiring.

The interim meetings are slated for August 6 to 8 in Charleston.

Clarity Provided On Foster Care Ombudsmen

Pamela Woodman-Kaehler, office director of the Foster Care Ombudsman, gave a presentation and answered questions about West Virginia’s Foster Care Ombudsman’s purposes and functions.

Lawmakers heard from the office of West Virginia’s Foster Care Ombudsman Monday during a Joint Standing Committee on Government Organization.

Pamela Woodman-Kaehler, office director of the Foster Care Ombudsman, gave a presentation and answered questions about West Virginia’s Foster Care Ombudsman’s purposes and functions.

“The foster care ombudsman investigates and resolves complaints that basically relate to the child welfare system,” Woodman-Kaehler said. “If there is an action or inaction or decision of any state agency that is involved with the foster care population, it is typically within our jurisdiction to help our public with that issue.”

Established by the West Virginia Legislature in 2019, the West Virginia foster care ombudsman’s team has received a total of 1,834 complaints. Woodman-Kaehler could not comment on which claims have been substantiated. There are currently 6,262 children in West Virginia state care.

“And we talked to hundreds and thousands of people, overall in meetings, and panels with relationships to investigating complaints, and helping people,” Woodman-Kaehler said. “A very important part of what we do is we substantiate or validate complaints that are validatable that come to our office, and we keep track of complaint validity by topic and by county and we are working hard to attempt to map that.”

Del. Kayla Young, D-Kanawha, asked Woodman-Kaehler about the number of complaints and some issues surrounding vouchers not being accepted at certain stores. She said the department issued a variety of different changes.

“I stayed on top of those changes and how they were being implemented with leadership,” she said. “If there are complaints about vouchers only being accepted at a particular store, I would suspect it’s a communication error on the part of a well-intended, but inaccurate employee sharing information.”

Woodman-Kaehler reported that more than 10 people work in the foster care ombudsman’s unit, and due to anonymity procedures couldn’t elaborate further.

Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, asked Woodman-Kaehler if her office has enough staff, given nationwide workforce shortages.

“Our workforce is positioned all over the state, we are not Charleston-centric, we are throughout the state so that we can have that presence wherever we may be needed,” she said.

Woodman-Kaehler also said the office of the foster care ombudsman’s budget is $979,000, and as of the fiscal year to-date the office has spent just under $600,000 of that sum.

Parent Offers A Look Into West Virginia Foster Care

In 2021, Dianna Canifax and her husband Lee decided to become foster parents. In December of that year, they received their first placement. That’s when the family learned about the communication gaps within the state’s foster system.

A foster parent testified before the Joint Committee on Children and Families during April interim meetings, citing communication problems within the system.

“There was very little to no information given to us,” Canifax said. “We didn’t know what [our foster daughter’s] history was or her medical issues.”

Canifax is also a trained mental health therapist for children and said she and her husband picked up the seven-month-old from the hospital and learned the child suffered from breathing problems and seizures.

The family spent the next five months attending every appointment and properly treating the child’s ailments.

However, the most devastating portion of Canifax’s care for the child was the removal.

“She had only seen her parents in the past seven weeks for two hours,” Canifax said. “[The child’s biological mother] had told the workers at the agency ‘I have no attachment to this child.’ And [the mother] did not know she’d had a seizure, or what medication or when she was on her goals for birth to three.”

Regardless, the courts returned the baby to her biological mother.

This experience did not stop the family from continuing to foster. The Canifax family hopes to adopt the two children currently in their care but has had trouble getting in contact with CPS about the status of the adoption.

“But we’ve had, you know a little bit of problems with communication over the last year and a half, which from both professional and personal side, I know that our system is just…we have so many kids that need our help,” Canifax said. “And that’s kind of why we made the decision to go into foster care and hopefully adopt.”

Canifax credits her communication with CPS to her organization and communication skills, noting that she keeps track of custody hearings regarding the children in her care.

In response to a request for comment, the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources Commissioner of the Bureau for Social Services Jeff Pack said:

“The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) appreciates the tremendous support West Virginia’s foster and resource families and relative/kinship caregivers provide for children in foster care. DHHR is continuing to work with field staff and child placing agencies to create more opportunity for dialogue.”

DHHR Hires 29 New CPS Workers

According to the Child Welfare Dashboard, West Virginia has 6,262 children in its foster care system.

That number has increased by 111 since January, but the DHHR hired 29 new CPS workers in the same period through targeted recruitment, job fairs and hiring incentives.

Gov. Jim Justice acknowledged the gap during his administrative briefing Wednesday but called the hiring initiative a significant improvement.

“We welcome the new hires and we’d tell you just this, if you want a life of great honor, and great feelings of accomplishment, and a feeling of really doing something wonderful and getting paid, you know at a good wage and everything, please contact the folks at DHHR,” Justice said.

According to the dashboard, the department is now 71 percent staffed.

“The complex nature of Child Protective and Youth Services cases have made these positions challenging to fill,” said Cammie Chapman, DHHR’s Deputy Secretary of Children and Adult Services. “The progress in recruitment and hiring is a direct result of the support that has been provided by Governor Justice, the West Virginia Legislature, and Interim DHHR Cabinet Secretary Jeff Coben.”

Officials Provide Clarity And Updates On Delayed Foster Care Payments

The Legislative Oversight Commission on Health and Human Resources Accountability (LOCHHRA) met Tuesday for an update on the DHHR’s years-long overhaul of critical computer systems.

The Legislative Oversight Commission on Health and Human Resources Accountability (LOCHHRA) met Monday to discuss the transition plan for the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR). But lawmakers also heard about other issues, including an update on the years-long overhaul of critical computer systems.

In 2016, the DHHR undertook a project to replace three antiquated computer systems: the Family and Children Tracking system, the Recipient Automated Payment Information Data system and the Online Support Collections and Reporting system.

The goal was to replace those three systems with one integrated platform to modernize the technology for efficiency and reduce costs.

The contract was awarded to Optum Technologies in November 2017. The total cost of the contract over 10 years is $308 million.

The build and implementation of the new People’s Access to Help or PATH system cost just under $163 million. About $138 million, or 84 percent, comes from federal funding and about $24 million comes from state funds.

The implementation phase is milestone based, meaning that the vendor does not receive payments until certain work is completed.

In Feb. 2020, just prior to the pandemic, the DHHR released the PATH public portal which was an update to the online application where people can apply for various services including Medicaid, SNAP and child support.

Justin Davis, assistant to the cabinet secretary of DHHR, told lawmakers Monday the new system will add efficiency to the workforce and help improve the quality of the services that DHHR delivers.

“We’re implementing PATH in a phased approach,” Davis said. “We’re onboarding certain pieces of functionality and certain programs over a period of time, it’s not everybody jumping into the pool all at once.”

In January 2023, the DHHR launched the Child Welfare Social Services portion of the new system.

Cammie Chapman, deputy secretary of DHHR’s children and adult services, said when the site launched in January, the department was not aware that launching the site would impact payments.

She said they realized the error when processing February payments and found the payments to be missing or incorrect. All payments were affected to some degree and left some recipients without their money for weeks.

“Because we knew that these issues were coming up, and as soon as we were able to get a full grasp of what was going on, we worked with the auditor’s office, we worked with the treasurer. Those offices could not have been more supportive and getting checks out as soon as possible,” Chapman said. “They did special check runs for us, they got off their schedule, and they did whatever they could to help us make payments as quickly as we could, once we knew that they were correct.”

Chapman said Mission West Virginia is helping the DHHR coordinate reimbursement for any fees that may have resulted from these delayed payments.

She reported to the committee that the department is back on schedule and in the first week of April, released over 22,000 payments in the amount of about $25 million.