Grappling with a troubled foster care system, the House of Delegates passed a bill on Wednesday some lawmakers say will minimize children bouncing from home to home. As part of the measure, the state could more quickly terminate parental rights, allowing a child to hopefully find permanency in a suitable foster home.
“Outside of safety, those children deserve permanency. We are physically damaging their brains and slowing their development by traumatizing them time and time again unnecessarily,” said Del. Adam Burkhammer, R-Lewis, who is a foster parent. “We’re trying to shorten the unnecessary moves.”
The bill would also change how the Department of Human Services handles reunifying foster children with their biological siblings. Reunification is still a priority, bill sponsors say, and the measure shortens the timeframe for DoHS to find siblings.
It would loosen the requirement that children be reunited with siblings if it’s against the child’s best interest.
The bill has received pushback from child welfare groups, who say its requirements could harm children. It conflicts with federal child welfare laws that prioritize biological family and sibling reunification, they say.
“West Virginia should be taking actions to keep brothers and sisters together — not make it easier to separate them,” said Jim McKay, state coordinator for Prevent Child Abuse West Virginia. “Noncompliance with this federal legislation puts West Virginia at risk of losing essential [federal] funding that supports services for children and families statewide.”
Bill sponsors maintain that the bill will still meet federal regulations. Del. Jonathan Pinson, R-Mason, said, “We are pushing the envelope because we’re serious about trying to improve our foster care system in West Virginia.”
The bill passed the House on a vote of 97-2.
The state’s foster care system is overwhelmed and has the nation’s highest rate of children coming into foster care. There are more than 5,800 children in foster care.
A 2019 class-action lawsuit brought by West Virginia foster children said that the state left kids to linger in its system without any plans for permanency. A federal judge recently tossed the lawsuit, but said the problems in foster care persist and gave a scathing review of how state leaders had neglected the system.
The measure, House Bill 2027, says that if a child has been in an appropriate and safe foster care arrangement, including a foster family, for 15 months or 50% of the child’s life, then the department cannot terminate that placement unless it’s in the best interest of a child. Current state law sets the window at 18 months.
West Virginia terminates parental rights at twice the rate of any other state.
Pinson said foster children regularly cycle from placement to placement, which could be foster homes or residential facilities. As a foster parent, he has experienced a foster child, who was a baby, being taken from his home only to return later.
“What you have in front of you today is one opportunity to address one specific problem of addressing children who are being bounced around from foster home to foster home oftentimes for no fault of their own and at no fault of the foster parent,” Pinson said. “We have watching today foster parents who have had their hearts ripped out because a child was moved from their home who they’ve connected with … but moved from their home simply because it was more convenient for the other stakeholders in the case.”
Del. Jim Butler, R-Mason, said, “We need to allow the kids to move onto a better life.”
Molly Arbogast, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers West Virginia chapter, said the change would allow termination of parental rights far earlier than the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act standard.
“ASFA sets a uniform timeline — 15 out of the last 22 months in care — before a termination petition is required, ensuring parents have a fair opportunity to work toward reunification,” she said. “The bill’s 50% rule would create a harsher, arbitrary standard that could result in unnecessary family separations, particularly for very young children, without federal authorization.”
Bill would change state’s sibling reunification policy
The bill also would also mandate that DoHS find a child’s biological siblings and families of siblings within 90 days, and the department must inform foster or adoptive parents of eligible siblings for placement or adoption.
“Those decisions were being delayed out for quite some time,” Burkhammer said.
Current state law says the department “shall” prioritize sibling reunification; the bill would change “shall” to “may.”
Burkhammer said that the measure still prioritizes sibling reunification, but there are instances — including cases where sibling abuse is happening — that aren’t best for reunification. Children are also sometimes reunified with half-siblings and their family whom they’ve never met, he said.
“There was no flexibility with folks to truly determine the best interest of the child,” Burkhammer said. “What we’re doing too often is cookie-cuttering too many of these cases. It’s a preference, and it should be considered, but we really want you to consider the best interest of the child first and foremost.”
McKay hopes the bill will be amended in the Senate should they take it up for consideration.
“For many children, those [sibling] relationships are their only remaining connection to family — and a critical source of comfort and stability. Separating them adds to the trauma they’ve already endured,” he said, adding that federal law requires states to take actions to place siblings together.
The American Bar Association has stressed the importance of prioritizing sibling connections.
The House also passed House Bill 2880, which assigns an individual through the Court Improvement Program or Public Defender Services to assist parents through the requirements to be unified or reunified with their children.
Del. Patrick Lucas, R-Putnam, told members that they’ve faced criticism this session about passing “red meat bills.”
“It’s about time we did something to improve the lives of foster children and foster parents,” he said.
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