Round-up of National Child Abuse Prevention Advocacy Efforts
Legislative updates:
Home Visiting Reserve Fund National Sign-On Letter
Thirty-six national organizations endorsed a letter sent to the House and Senate Budget Committees in support of including a home visiting reserve fund in the final FY 2010 Budget Resolution (PDF). In the letter, the organizations request that the language used in the resolution and any accompanying report reflect the core components of evidence-based home visitation services that were developed by members of the national Home Visiting Coalition steering committee.
Background
The House and Senate Budget Committees are in negotiations to reconcile the differences between their FY 2010 budget resolutions. Once agreement is reached, the final budget resolution will be voted on in the House and Senate and will provide the framework for the tax and spending decisions made this year.
Both the House and Senate include deficit-neutral “reserve funds” for home visitation in their budget resolutions. Reserve funds allow the Chairman of the Budget Committee to adjust a committee’s spending allocation after the budget resolution has been adopted to meet a specific policy purpose, as long as the legislation wouldn’t raise the deficit. There are no specific dollar amounts associated with the reserve funds. Both the House and Senate versions of the reserve fund are inclusive of the range of evidence-based home visitation programs. The report language accompanying the House resolution is more restrictive, noting that the funding should support home visiting programs that “have been tested in well-designed randomized controlled trials and are likely to produce future budget savings by improving child and family health and well-being.” Report language is non-binding, but does indicate Congressional intent to authorizing committees and to the Administration.
Respected Researchers Send Message to President Obama
Four highly regarded researches with careers in the study of home visiting, child abuse prevention, and early child development sent a joint message to President Obama regarding his nurse home visiting proposal (PDF). In the letter Deb Daro, with Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, Kenneth Dodge with Duke University, Heather Weiss with the Harvard Family Research Project, and Ed Zigler with Yale University, articulate their concerns with implementing a national home visiting policy that is limited to one model.
HFNY’s Response to CEBP and Letter to NY Senators
The Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy issued a paper on early childhood home visitation that provided their perspective on the effectiveness of six home visitation programs, including Healthy Families New York.
In addition to the direct response to CEBP, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services sent a letter to their U.S. Senators detailing the need to look beyond nurse home visiting when designing a national home visiting policy (PDF).
Back to Top |
- We're an official partner!