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Save Children; Save Successful Child Abuse Prevention Services

HARTFORD, MARCH 11, 2010 - Advocates for children marched from the Hispanic Health Council to the state Capitol to protest potentially devastating cuts to the state’s successful child abuse and neglect prevention network.
     Gov. M. Jodi Rell proposed cutting the budget for prevention services provided by the Nurturing Families Network of the Children’s Trust Fund in half, eliminating 14 sites where the program is offered and shrinking each of the remaining sites by at least one-third.
      The Hispanic Health Council is one of the 42 sites across Connecticut that now provide trained home visitors who make weekly visits to vulnerable first-time mothers from the time of a baby's birth to the 5th birthday. During the past year, the program served close to 2,000 families statewide.
   Home visitors not only teach young clients to be better parents, they help them overcome traumatic or harsh experiences from their own childhoods to become stronger adults and better role models for their children.
    But if that’s not enough, look at the bottom line, says John M. Leventhal, MD, medical director of Child Abuse Prevention Programs at Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital. Providing preventive services to one family costs about $3,000 a year, Leventhal says. Compare that with $30,000 a year for a case of abuse or neglect substantiated by the state Department of Children and Families or the $44,000 a year cost of an adult who might go to prison if convicted in an abuse case.
The march was sponsored by Family Life Education.  

Read what Helen Ubinas had to say in The Hartford Courant.