Gov. Jim Justice today announced that a 15% salary increase is a reality for 970 direct services employees of the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources’ (DHHR) Bureau for Social Services, effective June 18, 2022. Additionally, Gov. Justice announced a new child welfare dashboard will be published on June 1, 2022.
Eleven classifications will receive the salary increase: Adult Protective Service Worker Trainee; Adult Protective Service Worker; Adult Protective Service Supervisor; Child Protective Service Case Coordinator; Child Protective Service Worker Trainee; Child Protective Service Worker; Child Protective Service Worker Senior; Child Protective Service Supervisor; Health and Human Service Aide*; Social Service Worker 2*; and Social Service Worker 3*. (*Limited to certain employees working in direct services.)
“I told you we’d get this done and we got it done without spending any excess money,” Gov. Justice said. “I always say we need to mind the store and we’ve done it the right way. As a result, we’re now able to compensate these people that are doing incredible work. I appreciate all the great work by Secretary Crouch and so many people at DHHR that have put in a lot of good licks on this.”
DHHR will publish a child welfare dashboard on DHHR’s website on June 1, 2022 showing publicly available information on Child Protective Service placements, referrals, and workloads, as well as other important information. The dashboard will be updated monthly.
“I share and appreciate the Governor’s vision on this project and am proud of the work of DHHR’s Office of Management Information Systems to create the dashboard,” said Bill J. Crouch, DHHR Cabinet Secretary. “Improving DHHR’s child welfare system has been a top priority of mine as well as the Governor’s and the Legislature. It was important to me to implement the salary increases and the child welfare dashboard as quickly as possible.”