The West Virginia agency charged with protecting children repeatedly rejected proposals to reform the child welfare system as kids were beaten and died, a senior state official said in sworn testimony made public on Thursday.
Jeremiah Samples, a former deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Resources who now advises top lawmakers, said the agency continually pushes talking points over transparency.
“I look in the mirror on this stuff and think about it all of the time,” he said.
A class action lawsuit against DHHR filed in 2019 stemmed from allegations of severe neglect and abuse in the state’s child welfare system.
Last month, Samples was questioned under oath as part of that lawsuit. A nearly 250-page transcript of his interview provides the public with a new account of the problems within West Virginia’s troubled child welfare system from a longtime state official who advised two branches of government. The transcript was filed in U.S. district court in Charleston, where the case is being heard.
Samples, now senior adviser to the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Government and Finance, said the department rejected efforts to reform child protective services. Some of those were reforms he proposed, but Samples also took some blame.
Samples, who was fired from the state health agency in 2022, said children who don’t need inpatient psychiatric care are confined to hospitals, children with disabilities who don’t need to be at secured facilities are held in juvenile detention centers and others have stayed at hotels and a state resort.
Samples said workers who are supposed to protect the state’s children face such overwhelming backlogs that they continue to respond to calls about abuse and neglect much too slowly.
State health officials touted a 47% CPS vacancy reduction this year, and a spokesperson for the state Department of Human Services, a new agency following DHHR’s split into three, has said that they’re also working on filling positions by supporting internships and offering hiring and retention incentives.
But Samples said when some people – such as teachers and police – make child abuse reports, some human services workers screen them out and decide not to investigate.
Then, Samples said, “a tragedy occurs or other information comes out that would lead one to believe that how could this information have been missed in a proper investigation.”
Samples said top DHHR officials, including former Cabinet Secretary Bill Crouch, frequently rejected efforts to share with lawmakers information about the state’s response to child abuse allegations.
“There had been significant problems that West Virginia was facing with disabled populations being abused, sometimes heinously, to the point of death,” he said.
He said in 2017, fewer than 70% of cases were investigated and about 60% are now.
He said he had one conversation with the state foster care ombudsman about how she was concerned after being directed to develop public reports consisting of “talking points as opposed to actions with tangible results.”
Samples said some of his advice has made it into legislation, including the creation of an information portal with a provision to share child abuse timelines with the foster care ombudsman, although lawmakers didn’t introduce a plan to address case overload for workers.
Samples said he tried to make a difference, but faced criticism over “bad press.”
“But, you know, eventually I just couldn’t — you got to be able to sleep at night,” he said.
A Department of Human Services spokesperson did not immediately respond to an emailed request for a response, and contacted by phone on Friday, Samples declined to answer questions about his testimony.
“I think it’s best to let my sworn testimony stand for itself,” Samples said.