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West Virginia probably spends on child welfare at a rate anywhere from 9% to 44% above the national average.
West Virginia Watch is at it again.
That’s the publication that has published thousands upon thousands of words about the child welfare system in the Child Removal Capital of America – and not one of those words that I can find comes from a parent who lost a child to foster care.
That’s the publication that repeatedly presents as fact the false claim that West Virginia’s status as Child Removal Capital of America is some inevitable consequence of substance abuse. In fact, as we have pointed out previously, if all substance abuse disappeared in West Virginia tomorrow the state still would be tearing apart families at a rate double the national average.
And now it offers up a commentary (labeled as one for once, at least) in which a foster parent condemns another foster parent for daring to tell the truth about money: Money, or rather the alleged lack of it, is not the reason the West Virginia foster care system is so awful.
To read West Virginia Watch and other news outlets constantly bemoaning a supposed lack of funding for child welfare, you’d think West Virginia was spending at or near the lowest rate in the country. You would hope that before repeating that mantra someone at West Virginia Watch would have checked to see how West Virginia actually compares.
Apparently, they never have. So I guess we’ll have to do it for them.
Comparing rates of child welfare spending
A precise comparison is impossible – but a rough comparison can be done. And that comparison shows that West Virginia probably spends on child welfare at a rate at least nine percent above the national average – even when rates of child poverty are factored in. And that probably is a significant underestimate.
Here’s what we know, and what we don’t:
Every couple of years ChildTrends attempts the herculean task of trying to figure out how much every state spends on child welfare. This is incredibly difficult because there are a vast number of federal, state, and local funding streams, some of which are reserved for child welfare expenditures, many of which are not. NCCPR then takes these state totals and divides them both by the total number of children in each state and by the number of impoverished children – which we think is the fairer comparison. It’s based on these cost-per-child estimates that we say West Virginia is spending on child welfare at a rate above the national average.
Some important caveats
Because the task takes so long – and requires trying to get answers from every state – the data typically run well behind. Unfortunately, now they are five years behind – the most recent are from 2020. So that’s the first crucial caveat; the spending data are old. But there is nothing to indicate that anything happened in West Virginia to prompt child welfare spending to plummet – and certainly not to plummet more than any other state.
The other caveat explains why the West Virginia spending figure probably is too low: As I said, ChildTrends tries to get the data from every state. A few states couldn’t or wouldn’t supply the data. Guess which state was among them. Yep. So for West Virginia, and a few other states, ChildTrends had to craft estimates based on federal data sources – and for some very large categories, it could provide no estimate at all. Categories that, on average, account for 35% of a state’s total child welfare spending are missing for West Virginia.
So the real spending total for West Virginia in 2020 probably was significantly higher than the ChildTrends estimate. Indeed, West Virginia may spend at a rate more than 44% above the national average.
Spending so much, getting so little
So how is it that West Virginia spends so much, but we’re constantly hearing about overload and shortages? It’s because of the great paradox of child welfare: The worse the intervention, the more it costs. Safe, proven alternatives to family foster homes cost less than family foster homes which cost less than group homes which cost less than in-state institutions which cost less than out-of-state institutions. So of course, when you’re the Child Removal Capital of America you’re going to spend vast amounts of money and children will get nothing – or sometimes worse than nothing – in return.
So take it from a proud tax-and-spend liberal: West Virginia does not need to spend more on child welfare – but it sure needs to spend smarter.
