West Virginia

Child welfare advocates in West Virginia have recently offered up a slate of significant proposals to right the system that is admittedly flawed.

Federal judges have dismissed two lawsuits filed over the treatment of relative caregivers in Ohio and of foster youth in West Virginia.

The country’s next drug czar, if confirmed by the Senate, will be the first physician to hold the post, according to news reports.

West Virginia is splitting part of its welfare bureau into two smaller pieces as part of a broader effort to improve the child welfare system.

More than 90% of parents and foster parents who asked for an investigation into problems they had while dealing with the West Virginia foster care system in the recent past said they did so despite fear of retaliation, according to a news account based on the ombudsperson’s first-ever report.

Two more states have joined the roster of states that can now use the federal child welfare entitlement to support services for families whose kids might otherwise be taken away and fall into the foster care system.

West Virginia, the third poorest state in the nation with the highest rate of foster care removals in the country, is handing children off to unsupported and unverified relatives and dooming hundreds to age out of foster care from institutions and group homes.

After several years of planning, a nonprofit child welfare service provider is preparing to launch the nation’s first-ever college for foster youth. KVC Health Systems plans to open its yet-to-be-named campus in January 2018 in Montgomery, West Virginia.

When the Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities released its groundbreaking report this past March, it helped launch a national dialogue about child safety, and most importantly, shifted the current narrative around maltreatment-related fatalities in a significant way.