West Virginia’s secretary for human services, Alex Mayer, addressed members of the Oversight Commission on Health and Human Resources Accountability during interim legislative meetings Monday afternoon at the Capitol.
Mayer emphasized his agency’s continued focus on child welfare needs and the staffing required to meet those needs.
West Virginia’s current child welfare dashboard shows 6,000 current children in the system.
Mayer said one area of heavy focus is the on the state’s foster care children that are housed in hotels. Currently 18 children are in that situation in West Virginia.
“These children are not remaining in hotels because we don’t have enough beds, because we don’t have enough foster parents. It has to do with the complexities and the challenges that these children are facing,” Mayer said.
Mayer noted his agency has been working tirelessly with providers to better understand the needs of foster care children and the ways the agency can help boost their capacity and their ability to support these kids.
He mentioned that sometimes the issues and the needs of the children are so complex they need to go out of state to get proper care. Mayer said that currently West Virginia has around 600 children in out of state placements.
West Virginia has long had issues recruiting and retaining Child Protective Services workers. Mayer reported progress on that front, telling the committee that the state’s most recent vacancy rate in those jobs was at just 8.3 percent.
The state’s child welfare issues have long been interwoven with the drug addiction problem. Mayer emphasized that the state’s drug overdose numbers are down for the fourth consecutive month and are approaching levels of a decade ago.
