There are 100 of them now - West Virginia children who were bound for institutionalization and who have instead been able to remain in families and communities across the state, thanks to a program launched in October with a singular goal: keeping them safe at home.
Safe at Home West Virginia, a program of the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, launched on Oct. 1 in Boone, Cabell, Kanawha, Lincoln, Logan, Mason, Putnam, Wayne, Berkeley, Jefferson and Morgan counties. The federally-funded program uses dollars that were previously used to reimburse inpatient placements and redirects them to community-based wraparound services - a big shift from the funding model that West Virginia and other states had been beholden to for years, DHHR Secretary Karen Bowling said.
"What Johnny needs may not be what Sally needs," said Nancy Exline, commissioner for the state Bureau for Children and Families. "So really looking at it at an individual level - one child may need more traditional supports that we're either developing or have, or it may be that when you assess that child and have that family voice, it isn't about traditional services at all. It's about mentoring, or neighbors or what you do to help that child at school.
"It's a very different mentality than what we've ever thought about here in West Virginia, and that's what's made a difference in West Virginia, and that's why the nation is looking at West Virginia," she said. "We're looking at this an entirely different way. The outcomes we have here could change the way child welfare is looked at in the future across the entire country."
Safe at Home is currently classed as a "demonstration project" under the Title IV-E Waiver, and the program is being independently monitored to determine how successful it is, though Bowling said the department hopes to roll out the program in several more counties by the summer.
"It was a milestone when we got to 100 kids; we didn't know how many we would be able to get referred to us over the first quarter ... to get to 100 so quickly, for us, has been a very positive sign," Bowling said. "That indicates that people are embracing the concept of what we're doing, and that they're really trying to work with us."
Of those 100 children, 13 were brought back home from out-of-state facilities, 13 more have returned home from an in-state residential treatment center and 31 were prevented from placement, according to Exline.
"We know that any time a child is removed from the home, it's traumatic," Bowling said. "What we're doing with Safe at Home, really, is to have a trauma-informed system of care for our children. We want the full continuum of care, obviously, if there's a higher level of care needed, but what we really want is to think about how we can keep them at home. This is a family-focused intervention - it isn't just about the child."
The program's target demographic, 12 to 17 year olds, is part of what makes it unique - the group most likely to be removed from the home and placed in congregate care is also the group that can most benefit from a program like Safe at Home, Bowling said.
"When you think about those 12- to 17-years-olds, they're the ones who, when they turn 18, are going out into the world, and if we don't do a good job transitioning them - if they don't have stability in their lives, if they don't know how to function outside a structured environment - what's going to happen to them? We have to stop thinking of these children as a group, and start thinking about the needs of the individual child," Bowling said.
Mary White, chief operating officer of the Children's Home of West Virginia, said the agency, which operates in 14 locations across West Virginia, has already seen positive outcomes from the program. One child who was returned from out-of-state placement just before Christmas came home to improved housing, new appliances and a mother who had resolved to go back to school, all thanks to work from the WVCHS and the Safe at Home program, White said.
"I'd like to see no child in West Virginia be in an out-of-state placement, because I think West Virginia can take care of its own kids," White said. "This proves that family-focused, family-driven intervention in the home can work."
Reach Lydia Nuzum at
lydia.nuzum@wvgazettemail.com,
304-348-5189 or follow
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