RALEIGH COUNTY, WV (WOAY) – Family Treatment Court reunites children with parents tackling substance use disorders.
West Virginia’s Supreme Court of Appeals secured a $280,000 state Opioid Response Grant to fund the state’s 14 treatment courts (in 18 counties) through September 2025.
I found out what it could mean if the program loses its funding.
From 2019 to August 2025, about 600 children were reunified through a Family Treatment Court. The integrated court system works with community leaders, circuit courts, child abuse and neglect, and other community treatment resources, including providers, and anyone who can assist and help these parents fight the barriers they face to get their children back home.
“The national average in West Virginia, and a regular improvement period for a child to be returned home is 22 months, with the average 18 months in a CPS regular improvement period, said Raleigh County Family Treatment Coordinator Jessica Hilton. “However, with family treatment court, we’ve been able to shorten that time frame to just ten months of a child being reunified with their parents from the time of the removal. We have found that by integrating ourselves more into their lives, assisting them with the resources we’re able to provide them, that the children are going home a lot sooner to a much safer household.”
According to Raleigh County Circuit Court Judge Andrew Dimlich, the amount of success they’ve had with the program far outweighs the failures.
“The only people allowed into the program are high-risk, high-need, which means they’re the neediest of all the people in the abuse and neglect system,” the judge said. “We’ve had a very high success rate of graduation and not relapsing after graduation.”
The goal of Family Treatment Court is to hopefully ensure the children do not go back into custody after removal.
“We found with the statistics from 2019 to August 2025 of this year, out of those families we observed, only 10% of the children had been reentered back into custody for two years after reunification occurred, which is an extremely low rate,” said Hilton.
The fear is with an already strained foster care system and the amount it’s going to cost to pay the foster care substance fees for the national average of 18 months opposed to 10, the state will be losing money.
“Most of them come in homeless, with no place to live. A lot of them come in with broken family bonds; they’ve not spoken to extended family members for many, many years because of their addiction,” said Hilton.
The family treatment coordinator says they’ve also lost their driver’s license, and may not currently have a job or ever have had a job.
“But within that nine to 10-month time we have with them, we’re finding them housing, helping to mend those broken bonds with family members,” Hilton said. “They are paying off their fines, getting their driver’s license, and can become a better citizen of our community and build that future for them and their children.”
Families are coming into the court system asking for Family Treatment Court.
“They’ve heard the success rate, the resources, and the community they can have while going through one of the toughest times in their lives,” said the family treatment coordinator. “I just worry these parents won’t have that from here on out. And then what does that do for their children?”
Treatment courts offer numerous benefits, including reducing substance use, crime rates, and recidivism, while also saving taxpayer money and improving public safety.
“I think the Supreme Court is working with DOHS to get funding to keep the other treatment courts open for the foreseeable future,” Dimlich said. “But yeah, I think it would be a bad thing for everybody if the family treatment courts were defunded.”
