Lacrisha Rose's husband leaves their Cabin Creek home every day around 3:30 p.m., just when their two sons are getting home from school. He drives an hour to his shift at Alpha Natural Resource's Black Castle mine in Boone County and gets home about 5:30 a.m., as the sun is rising, 14 hours later.
He's survived five rounds of layoffs at the mine, but things are still tenuous.
"We're one pink slip away from poverty," Rose said. She works for two local nonprofits, both focused on preventing child abuse. She does home visits with TEAM for West Virginia Children, and she works to help parents with child development information with Upper Kanawha Valley Starting Points.
It's tough when her two sons, Remington and Sawyer, only get to see their dad on Sundays.
"I'm not complaining, because that's what we have to do to raise our family, but sometimes I feel like a single mom with a great support system," she said.
Rose is expecting a daughter in February and she worries about what happens if that pink slip comes.
"There are fewer jobs than there were 40 years ago, the jobs pay less than they did 40 years ago, they're harder to get and they're harder to keep," she said. "Meanwhile, the cost of health care, child care and food have skyrocketed."
Rose spoke Tuesday to a roomful of supporters and a smattering of lawmakers in the House of Delegates chamber as part of the Our Children, Our Future campaign, an effort to find different ways to end child poverty in West Virginia.
One in four children in West Virginia lives below the official poverty line. One in two children in West Virginia lives in a household below the "self-sufficiency standard," the income level at which a family can get by financially without any outside assistance.
That's, obviously, a huge problem and there are any number of ways to begin to address it.
The campaign is working to choose five policy proposals, from a pool of 18, to push for during next year's Legislative session. Options include ideas as different as a foster children's bill of rights, providing dental care for pregnant women and opposing a "right to work" law (the passing of which is a top priority of Republican Legislative leadership).
"We don't see child poverty as one thing or one issue, we see it as a whole range of things," said Stephen Smith, director of the West Virginia Healthy Kids and Families Coalition.
Rose, while supportive of all the group's proposals, was particularly taken with one called "jobs for coal families," that would provide a tax credit for miners who want to start a business, create an office of "head hunters" to specialize in finding jobs for ex-miners and prioritize the hiring of West Virginians with coal backgrounds for state infrastructure projects.
"I know that in our state mining jobs are coming to an end and however our state goes, one way or the other, is fine. I'm just worried about where those men are going to go next," Rose said. "I don't want to have to leave this state to be able to support my family."
Justin Anderson and about 10 of his classmates drove up from Logan to be at the policy summit on Tuesday.
Anderson, 16, a junior at Logan High School, is the student coordinator of a student leadership program called Believing All is Possible. They're focused on issues like keeping kids out of juvenile detention centers and investing in a "future fund" for West Virginia, to preserve some of the wealth created by the state's oil and gas boom.
Anderson, who lives with his mother, is one of the 56-percent of West Virginians without access to high-speed broadband Internet in his home.
He noted that West Virginia has the nation's lowest rate of residents with a bachelor's degree and said that within two years half of the state's jobs are expected to require a college degree.
"As children, if we are preparing to research specific, accurate information, we are going to need broadband Internet," Anderson told the crowd. "Without a tool as vital as Internet access we basically cripple a child's gateway to accessible education."
Amber Miller, of St. Albans, spoke at the Capitol to push for a bill called the Second Chance Employment Act.
Eleven years ago, Miller said, she was convicted of daytime burglary, a felony, for stealing $30 from her grandmother's home.
"I was extremely young and stupid and made a mistake," Miller said. "I didn't realize at the time that I would be standing in front of everybody here today and telling you that mistake ruined my life."
She spent a year-and-a-half in jail, she said, and since then it has been a constant struggle to get a job to support her two children.
"I have applied to job after job, after job, after job and I can't tell you how many times I've been denied because of my felony," she said. "You check mark that box 'convicted felon' and have it be thrown into the trash can before you even open the door to walk out and leave."
The Second Chance Employment Act would allow people convicted of non-violent crimes to apply to have them expunged from their records -after five years for a felony and after one year for a misdemeanor.
Despite having 11 bipartisan co-sponsors in the House last year (nine Democrats, two Republicans), it went nowhere.
The Our Children, Our Future campaign will hold voting on its website through the end of the month for policy proposals to pursue. Since it began in 2012, the campaign claims 18 victories for children and families, including things like expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, juvenile and criminal justice reform and creating the framework for a "future fund."
"We let everyone who's been involved in the process have a vote in deciding what issues we'll take on for the next year," Smith said. "That's the process, when it works it works."
Reach David Gutman at david.gutman@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5119 or follow @davidlgutman on Twitter.