In signing House Bill 2880 into law, West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey has allowed the creation of a Critical Incident Review Team that will be tasked with reviewing cases of fatalities or near fatalities involving children in the foster care system. That’s certainly a good thing, or at least a step in the right direction.
West Virginia has more than 6,000 children in foster care as cases of abuse and neglect soar, owing in no small part to the addiction crisis that affects the state at higher rates than any other in the nation. West Virginia doesn’t have enough eligible foster homes for these children, and agencies like Child Protective Services are understaffed and overworked. Children suffer as a result, sometimes drastically, as has been evidenced by a few high-profile cases in recent years.
When a tragedy occurs, it’s important to have the infrastructure in place to review what went wrong, hopefully leading to change that will help prevent something similar happening again.
At the same time, more needs to be done on the front end to prevent such tragedies, and that is where the Legislature, this governor and those who came before have failed.
When now-Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., was governor, he approved 15% pay raises for CPS workers in the hopes to incentivize them and reduce the high rate of burnout in those jobs. However, those raises were paid for by leaving many other vital jobs at the agency vacant.
Three years ago, the Legislature, which was and remains under a Republican supermajority, gutted a bill that would’ve centralized communication among foster workers and agencies and created a database for cases and complaints to flag incidents that might otherwise fall through the cracks. The law was proposed after a Greenbrier County woman killed five foster children in her care, before burning down her house and killing herself, as well. There had been numerous indications there were problems in the home, but they were fragmented among different agencies and locations, and no one put the pieces together until it was too late.
The bill passed the House of Delegates, 99-1, but was essentially killed in the Senate Finance Committee.
In the intervening years, precious little has been done to improve the situation for foster kids or workers in the system. In fact, Morrisey recently slashed the amount allocated in the state budget for Court Appointed Special Advocates who help foster children in the court system by 75%. He also vetoed a pay raise for guardian ad litems, advocates who represent the best interests of children in court cases. Morrisey said he’s sympathetic to the issue of a shortage of guardian ad litems, but the Legislature didn’t properly allocate funding in the budget for the pay increase.
Really, the budget is the bottom line here. Foster children in West Virginia are suffering because there isn’t enough money to properly staff, and competitively pay, agencies that are supposed to help these children. Those considering becoming foster parents need more flexibility, too. Lawmakers told West Virginia Watch that the Legislature’s inability to improve the state’s foster care voucher system that pays for certain needs like clothing was the biggest failure of the 2025 session.
No question, there are plenty of problems in West Virginia that require money that isn’t there to fix them. But there also is a question of priorities. Under the Justice administration, the state’s largest revenue source, the income tax, was slashed by more than 27%. Justice touted surpluses in excess of $1.3 billion to justify the reduction. But those surpluses were created by flat budgets that kept agencies like CPS understaffed, along with an infusion of one-time federal funds in response to the COVID pandemic. Instead of increasing spending for vital agencies, Justice and the Legislature reduced taxes and severely gutted state revenue. That leaves Morrisey to look for government cuts rather than bolstering agencies that are in crisis.
As a result, children, many of whom have already been through hell, continue to suffer.
