Weirton Council Weighs Opioid Funds for Children's Grief Counseling

Weirton's city council will consider a resolution Tuesday night to send $75,000 in opioid settlement money to the Weirton Christian Center, most of it for counseling and peer support aimed at children in the northern West Virginia city who have lost a parent to an overdose.

The resolution, recommended for passage by the city's Finance Committee on Friday, would direct the funds "to support the children affected by the death of custodial loss of parents due to substance abuse" and to pay for after-school and summer programs, life and job skills training, and peer group and professionally counseled sessions.

Mayor Dean Harris told the committee that he and City Manager Mike Adams met with center officials about the request and came away with a clearer picture of how many Weirton children are affected by substance use — many having lost one parent or both to overdoses, others with a parent in jail because of drugs. "The Christian Center basically has to deal with the outcome of that," Harris said. "They don't have the money for counseling."

What the money would buy

The Christian Center has served families in the Ohio Valley for more than a century and runs classes and after-school services for children from age three up, along with food assistance. Its grief program, Never Alone Kids, is a peer support group for children ages five to 18 who are grieving a loss, organized in ten-week sessions through the year, and the center partners with Ohio Valley Counseling to bring licensed counselors into the work.

Executive director Kim Weaver told WTOV9 that she was first approached about funding for the grief group and that the effort grew to cover children affected by addiction more broadly, which she said accounts for nearly half of the students at the center. Funding would cover licensed counselors, supplies for activities and other program costs.

The committee heard from residents as well as officials. Stacey Skariot said the center kept her family afloat while she was struggling with addiction — coats for her children, hot meals, help with homework — and she now teaches classes there eight years later. Councilman Tim Connell, who has driven for the center for several years, described what the adults in the building become for the children. "You get to know them," he said. "They look to you as a parent."

Ward 4 Councilman Rick Stead drew on his own family's history, telling the committee he lost a cousin to an overdose 20 years ago and that the cousin's daughter, who found her, later began using drugs herself and died of medical problems tied to that use. "We can deal with the adults," Stead said. "It's the children who need the help."

A city's ledger, and what it shows

Weirton has disbursed $1,083,287.31 of its opioid settlement funds to date, and the itemized list reads as a case study in how differently cities read the settlement's spending categories.

The largest single award, $277,555.10, went to the Weirton Fire Department for automated external defibrillators and a mechanical chest compression system. Another $240,000 went to the WVU Hancock County Extension Service to establish a prevention program assistant position, and $148,964 went to Northwood Health System for two peer recovery support roles — $66,000 for a peer recovery support specialist and $82,964 for an outpatient peer recovery staff position.

The police department and the county drug task force account for roughly $417,000 of the total: $9,586 for DUI simulation goggles, $211,654.85 for two vehicles and related equipment for the K-9 division along with street-based video systems and license plate readers, $74,926.36 for video surveillance equipment in vehicles and city neighborhoods, and $120,601 to the Hancock-Brooke-Weirton Drug Task Force for five years of cell phone extraction software.

That split — equipment and surveillance on one side, counseling and recovery staff on the other — is the same pattern that has drawn scrutiny of settlement spending in other states. In New Jersey this month, reporting on a Gloucester County township's purchase of police SUVs and license plate cameras with opioid money prompted calls for tighter oversight of how towns characterize expenses, and national watchdogs have argued that the settlement's loose spending categories let municipalities route money to routine law enforcement costs. Weirton's proposed $75,000 would be the city's first award dedicated to children's grief counseling, and it would still leave such spending at a small fraction of what the city has spent on vehicles, cameras and software.

Adams framed the distribution as a deliberate effort to lift up local services. "It's giving these kids life skills training they're not getting at home," he said.

What comes next

Connell asked whether the city could award more than the $75,000 the center requested. Adams said the application would have to be amended and go through the process again, adding that the center could submit a second request later and that he expects Weirton to receive additional settlement payments in the future.

The council meets at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Weirton Municipal Building. If the resolution passes, it will fund a program that treats children's grief as a substance use problem rather than a separate one — the same logic that has produced a decade of growth in substance use disorder services for families, and one that families in the Ohio Valley have been asking their city to pay for since the center started running grief groups for the children left behind by overdoses.