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CHARLESTON, W. Va.–Lawmakers and advocates for families are expressing concern about delayed payments to support West Virginia families who take in children.
The delays with foster care maintenance payments and adoption subsidy payments came about because of glitches that occurred during migration to a new government software system.
“Families are raising children, many of whom have experienced trauma and might have significant needs, and this is a subsidy that’s provided to meet the needs of those children,” said Marissa Sanders, director of the West Virginia Foster, Adoptive, & Kinship Parents Network. “This is a subsidy that’s provided to meet the needs of those children.
“So a family that has come to expect to get those funds to care for the child may be left unable to pay certain bills, unable to put gas in the car to run that child to the multiple appointments they have with specialists or even unable to pay for a sports fee or something coming up with a deadline, which is a really big deal to a child who wants to participate.”
Some families had automatic payments set up because the payments in the past have come through direct deposit at predictable intervals. “And when it wasn’t there, they then had multiple overdraft fees,” Sanders said.
Usually, according to the Department of Health and Human Resources, foster care maintenance payments and adoption subsidy payments are issued 10 to 14 business days after the first of the month.
The disruption arose late last week when the Bureau for Social Services announced that for the month of February payments will be issued in phases, potentially resulting in a delay of regular payments for certified kinship/relative caregivers and subsidized legal guardians of youth.
DHHR said the previous system to process the payments, the Families and Children Tracking System (FACTS), was built on technology that is multiple decades old.
The job was being transferred to a new system, People’s Access to Help (PATH). But DHHR says that because the previous system was so outdated, some of the financial information transferred was incorrect or missing.