WVa Social Services Workers Get Raises, Dashboard to Debut

By JOHN RABY, Related Press

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice stated Thursday that social providers employees will obtain a 15% pay improve by tapping funds from current vacant positions after such efforts failed within the Legislature.

About 970 staff of the Division of Well being and Human Assets’ Bureau for Social Companies will obtain the raises beginning June 18.

There are greater than 6,500 kids within the care of the state. In accordance with the DHHR, there’s a 30% emptiness fee statewide for foster care staff.

“I instructed you we’d get this finished and we received it finished with out spending any extra cash,” the Republican governor stated in an announcement. “I all the time say we have to thoughts the shop and we’ve finished it the appropriate manner. Consequently, we’re now capable of compensate these folks which might be doing unbelievable work.”

Worker pay raises and different key provisions had been stripped from a social providers invoice earlier than it died on the ultimate day of the common legislative session in March. After the pay raises had been gutted, DHHR Secretary Invoice Crouch instructed a Senate committee that the division would cut back the variety of open positions to offer the much-needed raises to little one protecting providers staff.

Crouch stated Thursday these vacant positions certainly funded the raises.

“We did take current positions in DHHR. We swept these. We are going to take away these,” he stated. “We’ve needed to do some juggling to get this finished. However once more, the governor was adamant that we do it.”

As well as, Justice introduced {that a} dashboard with some foster care information collected by the state shall be made accessible to the general public on the DHHR’s web site beginning June 1. That dashboard additionally was minimize from the invoice by lawmakers.

Advocates have stated having the info accessible might assist each policymakers and nonprofit teams whereas holding residents knowledgeable. For instance, it would embody data on Little one Protecting Service placements, referrals and case workloads, Justice stated. The dashboard shall be up to date month-to-month.

“It is a manner for people to see what is going on on with the state in regard to our CPS program and ensuring we maintain kids protected,” Crouch stated.

The state is also within the midst of a hiring a guide to evaluation the huge DHHR, which has a $7.6 billion finances, or 39% of the state’s whole spending. In late March, Justice vetoed a invoice that may have break up the DHHR into separate companies, saying he first wished to look into its “points, bottlenecks, and inefficiencies.”

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