Mountain State Spotlight quoted UMSSW’s Bethany Lee urging lawmakers to move beyond incremental foster care fixes toward prevention, anti-poverty policy, and stronger community safety nets.
Mountain State Spotlight featured insights from Bethany Lee, professor of children’s services and director of PhD and postdoctoral programs at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, in its analysis of proposed West Virginia foster care legislation. Lee noted that while lawmakers introduced multiple bills aimed at improving the foster care system, the proposals are largely incremental and do not sufficiently address root causes such as poverty, housing instability, health care access, and untreated addiction. Emphasizing that child welfare systems often reflect broader societal gaps, she called for pairing child welfare reforms with robust prevention-focused policies that strengthen community safety nets and reduce the need for child removal in the first place.