As West Virginia works to safeguard nearly 6,000 children in foster care, lawmakers are weighing proposed changes to child welfare policy.
“It’s all about the safety for the kids and to guarantee and ensure that the parents are doing what they tell the courts they’re doing,” said Del. Scot Heckert, R-Wood.
Heckert is sponsoring House Bill 5214, which would require parents involved in substantiated abuse and neglect cases to pass a drug test before they can reunite with their children.
While courts or treatment programs already order drug testing in many cases, the bill would establish it as a statutory requirement.
“So how would this work for somebody who is maybe in drug recovery?” Heckert said. “Well, if you’re in drug recovery you should be going to classes and getting randomly tested to begin with. And the one thing about people that are in true recovery that I have found being in this is they hold themselves and their peers more accountable and they expect to be drug tested and to show that they’re doing what they want to do.”
The bill would also require testing for kratom, a legal but unregulated herbal substance capable of producing opioid- and stimulant-like effects.
“What we’re hearing is the people that are going through recovery or that have problems, they’re using kratom to bypass the system because right now it’s not tested for,” Heckert said.
Over the past year, referrals to the West Virginia Child Advocacy Network for suspected drug endangerment have reached four times the national average.
“West Virginia has been the epicenter of the opioid epidemic,” executive director of the West Virginia Child Advocacy Network Shiloh Woodard said. “As I mentioned earlier, we’ve made incredible strides forward with addressing the effects of the opioid epidemic. But there are lingering effects, and we see that at the granular familial level. Kids are still struggling with the effects of the crisis.”
Woodard emphasized that while protecting children from substance misuse remains essential, reunification decisions must consider the full scope of a family’s situation.
“We always have to look at families holistically and recognize all of the factors that might be putting a child at risk in their home environment, not just whether there’s drug misuse or there’s a drug-endangered element to the home,” she said.
The legislation cleared the House Judiciary Committee on Friday and will now move to the full House for consideration.