Sustainable Child-serving Workforce and Foster Care Modernization Act

HB 4782, the Sustainable Child-serving Workforce and Foster Care Modernization Act, updates foster care payment rates in West Virginia to better reflect current costs. The bill requires the state to reset base rates for basic, special, and therapeutic foster care using current cost data, with automatic annual adjustments based on recognized cost indexes like the Employment Cost Index for health care. It also mandates that therapeutic foster care and child-placing agency administrative rates be adjusted to current costs and include new incentive payments to support provider retention and stable placements. This bill directly affects foster care providers, child-placing agencies, and the Department of Human Services by changing how foster care payments are calculated and adjusted.