By Stephen Baldwin, Amanda Estep-Burton, and Lisa Zukoff, The Register-Herald, February 6, 2020
As state legislators, we are often asked what can be done to stop people from leaving West Virginia, to keep our best and brightest at home. We hear about it on the news, in the grocery store, and in our church pews – people are leaving West Virginia at an alarming rate and they are not coming back.
As Democrats, we believe that to stop this exodus we must do a better job of taking care of the ones who still call West Virginia home, especially the most vulnerable among us, our children.
More children have been placed in foster care in West Virginia than in any other state, per capita. More than 6,500 kids are in foster or kinship care, according to the Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR). Twenty-five percent of our kids live in poverty. More than 10,000 students in West Virginia are homeless. For every 1,000 live births, 50 babies are born with neonatal abstinence syndrome.
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