West Virginia § 49-11-101 - 49-11-101. Systemic reporting transparency.

§ 49-11-101. 49-11-101. Systemic reporting transparency.

(a) The commissioner shall update the existing child welfare data dashboard by July 1, 2026, and shall update the child welfare data dashboard monthly thereafter to report on system-wide issues including, but not limited to, system-level performance indicators, intake hotline performance indicators, field investigation performance indicators, open case performance indicators, out-of-home placement performance indicators, and federally mandated performance indicators including, but not limited to, time to first contact to all children, information on children in non-placement or temporary lodging status.

(b) The Commissioner shall update the existing child welfare data dashboard with information on child fatality and near fatality information related to those cases subject to review by the Critical Incident Review Team as set forth in §61-12B-1 et seq . of this code within 48 hours of a child fatality or near fatality. With respect to child fatality or near fatality information, the Department of Human Services shall report the following variables: the date of the incident, the child’s sex, and the child’s age. The data dashboard shall provide a link to the final report of the Critical Incident Review Team within 24 hours of its completion. The Commissioner shall send a notification, within 24 hours of child fatalities or near fatalities, to the Secretary of Human Services to enable it to convene a meeting of the Critical Incident Review Team.

(c) The child welfare data dashboard shall include workforce information including, but not limited to, the number of child protective services staff that have been hired but who have not completed training, the number and vacancies of adoption workers, and the number and vacancies of home finders.

(d) Starting July 1, 2026, the data reported on the child welfare data dashboard shall be represented as a point in time number and trended over time. Beginning July 1, 2026, the data shall be saved in a way to allow public users to search the dashboard yearly by reporting date, and by county. The Department of Human Services may apply data suppression in order to protect individual identification as necessary.