West Virginia Code Chapter 49. West Virginia Child Welfare Act § 49-2-201. Findings and purpose

The Legislature finds that there exists a need in this state to assist dysfunctional families by providing nurture and care to those families' children as an alternative to removing children from the families.

The Legislature also finds that the family is the primary social institution responsible for meeting the needs of children and that the state has an obligation to assist families in this regard.

The Legislature further finds that children have significant emotional and social ties to the natural or surrogate family beyond basic care and nurture for which the family is responsible.

The purpose of this article is to establish a pilot program to evaluate the utility of providing intensive intervention with the families of children that are at risk of being removed from the home. For these limited purposes, the department is authorized to use available appropriate funds for that intervention service, but only to the extent that moneys would normally be available for the removal and placement of the particular child at risk.