CHARLESTON — A lawsuit might soon be filed against West Virginia by the federal government in response to the foster care crisis that was brought on by the opioid epidemic ravaging the state.
West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) Cabinet Secretary Bill J. Crouch said the drug epidemic in West Virginia has created a child welfare crisis in the state.
"Eighty-four percent of the children in foster care are there because one or both of the parents are addicted to drugs," Crouch said in a statement to The West Virginia Record. "I believe that DHHR has done a good job of taking care of the children in our care."
Crouch
The U.S. Department of Justice is considering filing a suit over the number of children in residential care instead of single-family homes, Crouch recently said.
"Because of the limited number of foster families available, many children may be placed in residential care facilities located out of state," Crouch said. "The Department of Justice (DOJ) has indicated it is concerned about the number of children taken out of the home in West Virginia as well as the number of children and adolescents in residential care and how long they stay in residential care in West Virginia."
Crouch said those are issues that he is also concerned about.
"We'd like to continue to work with the DOJ as partners," Crouch said. "I hope talks with the DOJ continue and, eventually, an agreement between the state and the federal government can be reached."
Crouch said the state's Child Protective Services (CPS) staff work extremely hard to make sure that every child in its care is safe and protected.
"CPS workers do not get enough credit for the challenging issues they face and the many hours they work," Crouch said. "The decision to take a child or adolescent from the home is never easy, but we always err on the side and safety of the child."
Crouch said the DHHR is doing as much as it can, given its resources.
"Early this year, I added 52 CPS positions in counties where workers were overloaded," Crouch said. "Those positions came from restructuring existing positions elsewhere in the DHHR."
Crouch said no new money was allocated and he believes each CPS caseworker should handle no more than 15 cases at a time, but in some places, workers were handling more than 25 cases.
"This is a difficult issue for everyone, and the only thing that will truly resolve the increase in the number of children that need our help is to curb the drug epidemic," Crouch said. "We want the same thing that the Department of Justice wants, and I have said that to them. We want a safe, healthy home for the children that we are responsible for, and we are going to do our best to try and achieve that for every child in the state that needs us."
West Virginia has more than 6,000 children in foster care, according to DHHR reports.