The West Virginia Department of Human Services told lawmakers on Tuesday that it won’t meet the initial deadline for rolling out a communication tool meant to improve care for children in the state’s troubled foster care system. (Leann Ray | West Virginia Watch)
The Department of Human Services won’t meet lawmakers’ initial deadline for rolling out a communication tool meant to improve care for children in the state’s troubled foster care system.
Lawmakers, who learned about the issue on Tuesday, worry that it will turn into another “PATH disaster,” where DoHS was recently four years behind on implementing a multimillion child welfare management system.
“We’re concerned … about delay, delay, delay. And ultimately we’ll be talking about these two sessions from now on and that is a really valid concern,” said Sen. Vince Deeds, R-Greenbrier.
Earlier this year, lawmakers signed off on creating a “foster parent information system,” where foster parents, Child Protective Services workers, attorneys and others involved in a child’s case could share and keep a record of the case and communication. The project, the brainchild of two lawmakers who are foster parents, is estimated to cost $7.5 million.
The legislation required that initial parts of the child communication portal be completed by July 1, 2025.
DoHS Deputy Secretary of Children and Adult Services Cammie Chapman told lawmakers at the state Capitol that her agency won’t meet that initial deadline due to prioritizing acquiring federal dollars to cover a large portion of its cost.
DoHS is currently selecting a vendor to take on the project and expects to roll out the project’s first phase in October 2025.
“We’re not going to hit that date,” she said. “We are going to push the vendor to be able to deliver this product as soon as possible. But knowing that we did, we decided to work with our partners, our federal partners, in order to get the match and make certain that we were able to pull in those resources instead of necessarily getting that first marker.”
DoHS completed the implementation in July of WV PATH, which is its massive online management system for critical programs foster care, Medicaid, emergency food assistance and more.
It was supposed to be completed in 2020 and racked up a $308 million price tag in the delayed roll out. The state’s contract with Optum, the vendor overseeing the system, goes through 2027.
The new child welfare communication portal will rely on the PATH system to operate.
“What we do not want to have is another PATH disaster that happened within the Department of Human Services that was untimely implemented and very costly to the citizens of West Virginia,” Deeds said.
Del. Adam Burkhammer, R-Lewis, was one of the sponsors of the new foster care portal legislation, which will be the first of its kind in the country. While he worried about the delay, Burkhammer said he was glad that DoHS worked to utilize federal funds for the project.
“It is a process we want to make sure it’s right … It’s always best for the state government to utilize as much resources as we can,” he said. “I think that what it can do is actually create a better product when it’s not just state dollars.”
Burkhammer, who currently has four foster children in his home, said that often foster parents feel like “they’re on an island.” The state doesn’t have enough foster homes for kids, leading to hundreds of children living in group homes in and out of state.
He said the lack of communication between people involved in a child’s case, including CPS and foster parents, can result in inadequate care for children.
“If we delay it out, I think you’re just going to continue to see frustration in foster parents as they try to navigate a very complex system,” he said. “We’ve got to remember: foster families are the most crucial piece of this whole system. We cannot function as a child protective services [system] without enough foster families.”
Chapman said she still expects that the complete portal will be implemented by July 2026, which is required by legislation.
Deeds asked that DoHS update the Legislature in January 2025 about the progress of the portal since the bidding process for a vendor will be closed by that time.
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