West Virginia DHHR: Assessment should flip balance to workers
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As officials in Charleston begin the work of determining which of the two firms submitting bids will be granted the opportunity to complete a "top-to-bottom" assessment of the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, they face a great deal of pressure to get this one right. There is no room for cutting corners in fixing the bloated and broken agency on which so many Mountain State residents rely. But there must be no increase in the size of King Bureaucracy's court, either.
Two agencies have submitted proposals, after Gov. Jim Justice vetoed a bill that would have split DHHR into two agencies.
At the time, Justice said his hope was to instead identify "bottlenecks and inefficiencies" in the department.
Anecdotal evidence suggests DHHR, which is tasked with handling so many of the challenges we face -- substance abuse, the foster care crisis, obesity, mental health … a pandemic … just to name a few -- is top-heavy with bureaucrats and low on the people doing the difficult work. Social workers, child protective services workers, behavioral health professionals and more are in short supply.
What they do is hard, and hard on them. Most of us could not handle what too many of them see on a daily basis. But some can. And among the first orders of business for whoever wins the assessment bid should be to figure out how to flip the pyramid so that the people actually providing the desperately needed services here are plentiful and supported. Any instance of bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake should be slashed immediately.
"Inefficiencies," as Justice called them, are a hallmark of West Virginia state government, despite promises by a swarm of politicians about five years ago that they were going to sweep in and "right-size" state government while eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse." That didn't happen, because those who become part of the government too often forget almost immediately who they are meant to be serving.
But there's a chance now, starting with the right choice in conducting this assessment of the DHHR. Good luck, to those tasked with making it.