By Esteban Fernandez, Times West Virginian
FAIRMONT — Jason Weber, national director of More Than Enough, thinks the way governments and communities approach the care of foster kids needs to change.
“A lot of the times, communities have been guilty in the past of coming to their child welfare system and pointing out potholes,” Weber said. “’Hey, you guys are failing here, you’re failing here and you’re failing here.’ What we teach in these workshops and everything we do is, we don’t point out potholes. We grab buckets of asphalt and help fill them.”
Weber facilitated Unstuck, a workshop devoted to helping communities transform foster care at the local level at South Ridge Church on Fairmont Avenue on Tuesday. Around 40 child welfare professionals, faith-based partners and community stakeholders attended. More Than Enough, an initiative of the Christian Alliance of Orphans, partnered with Chestnut Mountain Village of Morgantown to hold the workshop.
The animating philosophy behind Unstuck is that government child welfare agencies can’t support foster children alone. An entire ecosystem of care needs to be built around those children, which the community can provide. Greg Clutter, director of Chestnut Mountain Village, said the importance of community provided wraparound services and support can be seen in statistics concerning the retention rate of foster families. Eighty percent of foster families recruited quit within two years. Clutter said problems like those are too big for a single agency to solve on its own.
“The reality is when a local church community comes around the foster family and support them, gives them wraparound services, help with meals, transportation, are in it with them — we call those care communities — research shows it goes from half quitting in one year to 90% foster into that second year,” Clutter said.
Chestnut Mountain Village rose out of Chestnut Mountain Ranch in 2022. Chestnut Mountain Ranch has been conducting foster care related work since 2006. As for More Than Enough, Weber said they began advocating for churches to get more involved with the support of foster kids about 22 years ago. The community collaboration piece became the focus about six years ago.
The West Virginia Department of Human Services is partnered with Chestnut Mountain Village.
“Partnerships between the state, faith-based organizations and local communities are key to helping children and families thrive,” Alex Mayer, cabinet secretary of the West Virginia Department of Human Services, said. “By aligning public programs with the strengths of local and faith-based partners, the state can expand its reach, enhance service delivery, and build a stronger, more connected network of care that supports children and families where they live.
Another aspect of the model, Clutter said, is that while the work done by Chestnut Mountain Village is locally driven on the ground, the organization itself is informed by the national level Christian Alliance for Orphans. The organization brings best practices to local organizations, who will know how to best implement those practices at the local level since they understand the people and communities they work in.
In Fairmont, the local partner to the type of work Chestnut Mountain Village and More Than Enough are doing is South Ridge Church. Daniel Carpenter, lead pastor, said his church is in the beginning stages of creating the support ecosystem for Fairmont. South Ridge is working with Trinity Church to figure out what each church’s role should be when it comes to the foster care support ecosystem.
Clutter said the state leads the country in the number of kids in foster care, with more removals than anywhere else. According to the West Virginia Child Welfare KPI Overview from the Department of Human Services, the state has almost 6,000 kids in foster care placements. The state also received over 10,000 child referrals, with an acceptance rate of roughly 50%. The system is also overburdened and Clutter said there aren’t enough Child Protective Service workers for the level of need and the system itself has faced a few recent scandals. Clutter said the old way of doing things when it comes to kids in care needs to change.
“We’ve been trying the same thing for decades, but we believe that the solution is collaboration,” Clutter said. “We believe that there’s enough resources in about every community in the entire state of West Virginia to be brought to bear on this issue so that there’s more than enough for kids and families. Government cannot do this by itself. It’s going to take all of us.”