CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia has announced that its Family Treatment Court program will be funded for the next year.
According to a release from the Supreme Court, the Court has been awarded up to $1,162,038 through the federal Public Defender Services’ Impacting Child Abuse and Neglect (iCan) grant program.
The Family Treatment Court Program, which began in 2019, gives parents in the state the chance to get substance use disorder treatment while they work to re-unite with their children.
While there are over a dozen Family Treatment Courts currently in the state, the program was at risk of halting due to a lack of funding. The Court asked the legislature for $1.2 million to get through the next year, but the legislature chose to cut the overall budget.
The Court got a $280,000 State Opioid Response grant to make it through September.
Justice Haley Bunn says this grant award was an amazing gift, but the Court needs stability beyond the next year.
“We are really looking at this funding as a gap filler while the Court continues to pursue, hopefully more stable funding sources, but we’re really relieved that we can now ensure our employees and the participants in the Family Treatment Court that the program will continue for the next year,” Bunn told MetroNews.
She says they won’t be afraid to stand before lawmakers again and show them why the program is essential for West Virginians.
“We are going to return to the legislature and ask again,” Bunn said. “We asked in our last budget presentation in the spring and didn’t get those funds, but we stand prepared to ask again and also provide more information about how the programs work, how they make fiscal sense, how they make sense from the human aspect, and how it’s just good for the state and good for these communities.”
Bunn and others maintain that the Court should be funded on a yearly basis, as West Virginia saves money from its services.
“We can show that, just in foster care subsidies alone, these programs have saved more than $2 million of state dollars since the inception in 2019, so fiscally, it has an impact,” Bunn said.
Since the program’s inception in 2019, 437 children have been reunited with parents who graduated from the program. Bunn says beyond the finances, the Family Treatment Court touches dozens of lives every year.
“It also just has an amazing impact on these families and these communities. Just breaking the cycle of addiction and children coming up and growing up in the throes of a home that’s battling an active addiction,” she said.
According to Bunn, the Court not only reunites children with their biological parents, but it keeps them safe.
“100 percent of the babies born to participants in the Family Treatment Court have been born drug free. That is a stark contrast to the typical abuse and neglect proceeding, where that’s usually not as successful as far as the data shows,” Bunn said.
For Bunn and other justices involved in the program, a graduation day for participants of the program is one of the sweetest things they get to see on the job.
“They’re really some of the most wonderful days in the courtroom,” she said. “You get to celebrate these families coming through the throes of facing losing your children and addiction at the same time and having conquered those two hurdles with the help of the Court and their treatment team.”
“It is one of those rare instances where no one is walking out of the courtroom a loser. Everybody is happy.”