CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Foster families from across West Virginia watched from legislative galleries on Day 60 of the regular legislative session as lawmakers passed a broad-ranging foster care bill.
Melissa LePlatt of Harpers Ferry, speaking on the House of Delegates floor during a break, said it was important to be there. She was accompanied by a little boy. LePlatt described become licensed for foster care last month.
“I’ve been following from home listening to the committee meetings and was excited to see the bill get passed,” she said.
West Virginia’s foster care system has been growing at an alarming rate, related to the state’s struggles with drug addiction.
More than 7,000 children are in state custody. About 450 of those are out of state, mostly in group residential homes or long-term psychiatric facilities.
As the bill passed the House of Delegates on Saturday, Delegate Danielle Walker, D-Monongalia, saluted the parents who take children into their homes.
Pointing to the gallery of onlookers, she said, “Those little Mountaineers up there, this is an investment.”
Fayette County resident Shanna Gray described her support for the bill during a break on the House of Delegates floor, while three little girls — ages 5, 7 and 9 — gathered around her.
Gray supports a foster parents bill of rights and foster children’s bill of rights delineated in the bill. She also expressed appreciation for $16.9 million state officials are allocating to help families meet the cost of taking children into their home.
“It does take funding for some of these resources. We can’t have the services and the support we need without funding to back that,” Gray said. “So that’s a pretty important piece as well for us.”
Over time, she and her husband have provided a home to children of different ages. No matter the age, she said, the expenses add up. For older children, the costs may include laptops or expenses related to driving a car. For younger children, it’s diapers and toys.
“We like to take them skiing and they play soccer and softball and all the different sports. As of now, none of that is covered. It’s all out of pocket,” she said.
“It’s expensive raising a child. The national cost per day is like $35 a day, so nothing we’re receiving right now is covering anywhere close to that.”
The bill now includes a tiered system of financial support for foster families, with more money aimed at parents who take in children considered more challenging.
But it raises financial support overall for foster families and the kinship families who take in children. The bill dedicates $16.9 million.
Gray said that could encourage some foster parents to continue.
“An important piece to consider is foster parent retention,” Gray said. “We put a lot of funding towards bringing in foster parents and training them, and I think if we could increase some of the services and support for people who are already existing resources we would be able to keep some of that institutional knowledge.
“That’s one of the major reasons what pushes parents away are frustrations with the system. So I think this is a good step to help alleviate some of those.”
One of many lawmakers who worked diligently on the bill was Delegate Jeffrey Pack, R-Raleigh. During a break on the House floor on Saturday, after delegates had made closing remarks to support the bill, Pack accepted a hug from Delegate Lisa Zukoff, D-Marshall, who had also advocated for the bill.
“I think it is the best possible legislative solution to the problem we identified during the last interim period,” Pack said.
“There’s very little we can do to prevent those kids from ending up in this situation. There’s a societal problem that is plaguing us, and I don’t know of a law to write that fixes that. But we can do what we can to recruit people who are willing to take these kids into their homes, and we haven’t done a good enough job of that in the past.”
Marissa Sanders, director of the West Virginia Adoptive, Foster and Kinship Parents Network, was at the Capitol day after day during the legislative session. She watched from the legislative galleries as the bill moved toward final passage.
“It took a grassroots effort by foster parents, kinship parents and adoptive parents who really came together,” she said. “We were here at the beginning of session, at the end of session — people traveling from all over the state to come down and have their voices heard and let legislators know that these are things that we need.”