Photo Courtesy of WV Legislative Photography Senate President Mitch Carmichael, R-Jackson, is all smiles after passage of House Bill 4092.

CHARLESTON — The day before the end of the 2020 legislative session, the West Virginia Senate approved an amended bill that restores funding cut from the bill for increased reimbursement rates for foster and kinship families earlier this week.

House Bill 4092, creating a foster parent and foster child bill of rights and increasing funding for foster and kinship care reimbursements, passed the state Senate 34-0. If the House concurs with the Senate’s changes to the bill, it will head to the desk of Gov. Jim Justice.

HB 4092, as amended by the Senate Friday, puts in place 22 rights for foster parents, kinship families, and foster children. An amendment from Sens. Corey Palumbo, D-Kanawha, and Stephen Baldwin, D-Greenbrier, added on to a right for a child to be free from unwarranted physical restraint and isolation.”

The bill places duties and responsibilities upon foster parents, including not violating the rights of the foster child and providing all children placed in their care with appropriate food, clothing, shelter, supervision, medical attention and educational needs.

The bill also sets a reasonable and prudent parent standard, which gives foster parents authority to make daily decisions regarding a foster child’s extracurricular activities, including sports, arts and other activities.

Violation of any of these rights would be investigated by the foster care ombudsman.

An amendment from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, increases funding to the Department of Health and Human Resources for foster child placements from $4.9 million to $16.9 million. The funding was stripped out of the bill by the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday in favor of a tiered foster care system.

Blair said the reason why the amount was put back to $16.9 million was because the governor’s office updated the revenue estimates upward by $20 million, which gave lawmakers the flexibility to put the funding back in place. The amendment also requires reporting by DHHR and oversight of the spending.

“We want these children to grow up to be successful adults, and throwing money at it just doesn’t work,” Blair said. “Putting in the resources along with the oversight: that’s what makes the difference, making sure the resources we are providing are going to be utilized in a fashion that will be effective to turn these 7,000 children into successful adults.”

The amended bill set priorities for the use of the $16.9 million, including increasing efforts to prevent removal of children from their homes, identify relatives or kin to place children with, training kinship parents to be certified foster parents, and expand a three-tiered system to allow DHHR to provide a higher reimbursement for the placement of children with special needs or older children who are typically harder to place by July 1, 2021. DHHR is also required to create a pilot program to increase payment to uncertified kinship parents

The House version of the bill set specific reimbursement rates in state code. $75 per day, per child for child placement agencies; a $30 floor for foster parents; and $900 per month for kinship parents. Blair said with the $16.9 million back in place, placement agencies would receive no less than $65; the lowest tier of the foster care program would receive no less than $26, and kinship families would receive an increase. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Trump, R-Morgan, thanked the House for their work on the bill.

“We should be grateful for our colleagues in the House of Delegates for raising the issue of bring money into this system and enhancing payments through the department through child placement agencies for our for our foster care system,” Trump said.

The bill also includes a $1,000 payment to child placement agencies for each completed adoption and requires the rate paid by placement agencies to foster parents to be evaluated every two years. Another amendment adopted Friday would require payments to foster families be paid the same week each month. Senate Democrats thanked the majority party for working in a bipartisan manner.

“I think this is a good amendment,” Baldwin said. “It’s going to raise the floor for everyone. It’s going to put more funds into the tiered system so that those who have the most acute needs have access to those. I think this is a great solution and I appreciate the body’s incorporation of it.”

Sen. Ron Stollings, D-Boone, said that setting up a foster system to help children with special needs would help the state drawl down a 3-1 match from Medicaid.

“That really helps,” said Stollings, a Democratic candidate for governor. “It gives DHHR the flexibility to deal with these very complicated issues…this is a fantastic amendment.”

Sen. John Unger, D-Berkeley, has been a critic of the Senate Republican leadership, but had nothing but praise for the bipartisan work on SB 275.

“I want to thank each member of this body and the staff and everybody working where we put aside our partisan differences and did what was best for the child,” Unger said.