CHARLESTON, W.Va. — State Supreme Court Justice Haley Bunn said the best part of her job is when she gets to witness a West Virginia Family Treatment Court graduation.
“You see in the courtroom the ripple effects of these benefits,” Bunn said during an appearance Monday on MetroNews “Talkline.” “So often these families have a baby in arms and a support system. You can see on the children’s faces and the grandparents faces that everybody is there to celebrate this.”
The Family Treatment Court program, which began in 2019, now faces its biggest financial hurdles.
Bunn said the grant for the program changed in recent months so the the Court asked the legislature for $1.2 million to get the program through the next year. Instead, the legislature cut the Court’s overall budget that it now impacting the program.
“It was about $5.5 million from our overall request and that entire cut came on the personnel side of our budget and that’s the whole cost, really, of Family Treatment Court is a person, someone to coordinate it,” Bunn said.
The Court did announce last Friday it had received a $280,000 State Opioid Response grant to carry program through September.
Bunn said the program makes financial sense. She said there’s been a net savings of nearly $3 million since the program started six years ago.
“That’s straight foster care and kinship subsidies and that’s so conservative, that’s not looking at the other costs,” Bunn said.
There are currently 14 Family Treatment Courts that cover 18 counties in West Virginia. The program has reunited 437 children with their parents after those parents graduated from Family Treatment Court. The Supreme Court said kids whose parents are in the program are in foster care an average of just less than 11 months. The average is 18.8 months for kids who parents aren’t in the program.
Services are available to graduates 90 days after they complete the program to provide a transition back to a healthy family.
Former U.S. Attorney for Southern West Virginia Will Thompson started the first Family Treatment Court when he was a Boone County circuit judge. He called the current financial status of the program “depressing and scary” during an appearance Monday on MetroNews Midday.
“Obviously, we still have a huge problem with our foster care with the number kids in it,” Thompson said.
Bunn said the program is not just saving money but it’s saving families by the intense accountability it requires. She said abuse and neglect cases are reversed and children are reunited with their parents.
“It’s really a wrap-around court that gets everybody at the table and it’s intensive for the participants, the families, and really for the judge who is working the family treatment court.”
There have been 437 children reunited with FTC-graduate parents since the program began. Bunn said all 17 babies born during Family Treatment Court participation have been born drug-free.
“Four-hundred and thirty-seven kids is a lot of kids and you’ve got to look at it too that those kids have a lot better chance of being successful in their own lives–someone that it’s not going to cost society to take care of them,” Thompson said.
Bunn said she knows some have asked why the Supreme Court doesn’t use re-appropriated funds for the program.
“We’re just in a situation where using re-appropriated funds for that ongoing cost for employees in Family Treatment Court is just not prudent,” Bunn said.
She said circuit judges are not paid extra for FTC work.
There was a FTC graduation in Wood County Monday afternoon and other graduation set for Wednesday in Raleigh County.