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18-year-old Geard Mitchell is one of the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit against the state of W.Va. He and others say the state of West Virginia’s foster care system is broken. They’re urging the state to make changes to its foster care system, including providing more CPS workers, and reducing the amount of foster care kids who are placed in institutionalized settings.
About 400,000 children across the U.S. are growing up inside the foster care system, overseen by government employees who are overworked, and agencies that are historically underfunded. When the opioid epidemic hit, foster care systems saw a massive increase in the number of kids in their care. West Virginia has been hit particularly hard. The state has the nation’s highest rate of children removed from their home and put into foster care.