From the Charleston Gazette-Mail:
Child abuse and neglect is a crisis in West Virginia. That, in turn, has created a crisis in the state’s foster care system, as it grapples not only with the sheer number of children removed from homes, but being able to retain enough caseworkers and making sure the infrastructure of the system doesn’t collapse.
A lack of certified foster parents has always been a consistent problem, and now West Virginia is starting to lose some of those families because of frustration with the system, according to a report in the Gazette-Mail.
As Marissa Sanders, who leads the West Virginia Foster, Adoptive and Kinship Network, told reporter Amelia Ferrell Knisely, foster parents are feeling left out of the process, because they’re unable to get in touch with caseworkers and the services they need aren’t always available. Resources for the foster parents themselves, who might be feeling alone or overwhelmed in the challenge they’ve taken on, can be scarce. …
