DOES THE RECENTLY EXPANDED HHS HOME VISITING PROGRAM PUT OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO PARENT AT RISK?

In September 2013, Grassfire's "Liberty News" was the first to sound the alarm on what they called "a little-known aspect of ObamaCare - FORCED HOME INSPECTIONS." " Liberty News" strongly criticized this program, which has been designated by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)  in Washington, D.C. as the "Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program" (MIECHVP). 

In essence, "Liberty News" questioned DHHS's motivation for establishing this program stating that it would be used as a means to undercut the rights of American citizens to parent their children as they see fit.  "Snopes.com", another website pooh poohed these concerns stating, "No provision of [ObamaCare] authorizes federal agents to undertake forced home inspections." 

In other words, what "Snopes.com" responded to is the fact that DHHS has billed these home visiting programs as "voluntary." 

But do we believe these protestations that the program is voluntary, particularly after so many of us have dealt with CPS abuse or have been victims of the custody switching scams run by DHHS Fatherhood Initiative and the Access and Visitation Programs? 

At this point, I will stop here and state that I received services from state run home visiting programs for eight years because I have two children who have disabilities.  I had various educators who came to my home and worked on developing skills with the children and advised me on enhancing the children's growth and development. 

Even though it did make me feel nervous to have state workers coming to my house and I certainly worried about my housecleaning in advance of the visits, I have no doubt whatsoever that I and my children benefited greatly from those visits and I am deeply grateful to the government for that valuable assistance.  So I really am a person who can say that my family 100% got so much out of these programs. 

However, does that blind me to how such programs can be abused?  Not in the least! 

Are home visiting programs a new invention of the Obama administration?  No.  The reality is that home visiting programs are not new to the United States.  We had programs like this, privately funded by philanthropic organizations, as far back as the early 1800s.  The early kindergarten movement in the United States, begun in the mid-1800’s, included a home visiting component.  The children would go to school in the morning, and then the teachers would visit their homes in the afternoons.  Again, this was a largely private enterprise.  The home visiting component of the Kindergarten programs ended around the 1930s. 

In the United States, community nursing which involved home visits began in the 1870′s with a handful of nurses relying on funding from private philanthropies.  This kind of public health nursing approach included preventative health care, obstetrics, prenatal care and family education and a form of this program has continued up until the present, eventually receiving government funding. 

The community nursing approach was paralleled in the 1880s by the Settlement Houses where wealthy women went into impoverished communities and raised funds for day nurseries, advocated for the development of branch libraries, kindergartens, and night classes, taught homemaking and child care skills, established homeless shelters, and taught English to new immigrants in urban communities. 

Subsequently, the Great Depression, World War II, and the prosperity of the 1950s interrupted such efforts.  However, in the 1960’s along with the federal “War on Poverty” and initiatives such as Head Start and Home Start, home visiting programs were funded with a focus on social issues such as poverty and teen parenting, and health issues.  These programs were considered very successful, particularly in regard to reducing child abuse, to the extent that by 1991, the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse & Neglect recommended that the U.S. implement a universal home visiting program--meaning every family in the U.S. should have home visits.  However, there was no follow up to that recommendation. 

But we all should be nervous when the government starts thinking in this way.  Can you imagine a situation where every home in America receives visits from "nurses, social workers or other health care professionals" in order to check up on what you are doing with your children, to see that you are conforming to the currently accepted philosophies in regard to proper mental health, medical, educational, or religious practices? 

What if you don't choose to adhere to mainstream practices? Will you be reported to a higher authority, scrutinized and targeted as your children mature and enter the public school system or begin to be home schooled?  Where does it end?  If the government institutes a universal home visiting program, which I suppose will be billed as voluntary, what happens if you exercise your choice not to participate?  Will you be subjected to pressure to agree, or will your name be quietly referred to DCF for a visit, after which you become smart enough to participate "voluntarily" in the home visiting program? Just looking in depth at the idea of universal home visiting, the opportunity for abuse appears extensive. 

Home visiting to see whether your parenting techniques are proper is behavior that I more commonly associate with cults.  Now I hear that the federal government even considered such an idea and that a federal advisory board actually recommended it--I am more than amazed.  I am alarmed! 

While the idea of universal home visits didn't gain much traction in the 1990s, in  2008 the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R.  3590 and H.R. 4872), designated $1.5 billion to the Department of Health and Human Services for the years 2010 to 2014 to establish a coordinated system of early childhood home visiting that will eventually be established in every state.  Thus DHHS reported that since they obtained this funding, "it has been implemented in 544 communities in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five territories to serve about 15,000 families. 

While this is by no means a universal program, it is certainly quite extensive, and all indications are that the people who are implementing this program intend it to continue to be so.  As Mary Wakefield, Ph.D., one of the administrators of the program, stated, "This program plays a crucial role in the national effort to build comprehensive statewide early childhood systems for pregnant women, parents and caregivers, and children from birth to 8 years of age -- and, ultimately, to improve health and development outcomes."   

Apparently, "Liberty News" has spoken in what "Snopes.com" considers an alarmist tone with commentary such as the following: 

"the provision of ObamaCare (re: home visits) will provide [home care agents with] broad authority [to] ... clamp down on privacy and violate American rights.  Homeschool your kids?  Smoke a cigar from time to time?  Have a member who was at one time on active duty military?  ObamaCare enables agents to force a home inspection upon you.  And no state will be off limits..." 

In response, "Snopes.com" insists that there is nothing in the legislation establishing these home visiting programs which "authorizes federal or state agents to target and conduct forced inspections." In fact, nothing could be further than the case, insists "Snopes.com"--these programs are required to go out of their way to ensure that the programs are voluntary. 

So what kinds of households are considered to be at risk and eligible for participation in these home visiting programs?

The comprehensive list is as follows:

- Families with Low-income

- Family with pregnant women who have not attained age 21

- Families that have a history of child abuse or neglect or have had interactions with child welfare services

- Families that have a history of substance abuse or need substance abuse treatment

- Families that have users of tobacco products in the home

- Families that are or have children with low student achievement

- Families with children with developmental delays or disabilities

- Families who, or that include individuals who, are serving or formerly served in the Armed Forces, including such families that have members of the Armed Force who have had multiple deployments outside of the United States.

This list includes an extraordinarily broad net that could sweep in quite an extensive number of families.  For instance, how many cigarettes do you have to smoke in order to be considered a tobacco user?  How do you define "low" student achievement?  What is considered an "interaction" with child welfare services? 

I don't believe Connecticut itself has gone overboard with home visiting services.  The birth to three program which I participated in is really geared towards children who have specific disabilities and is not for everyone.  In terms of legislation resulting from the ObamaCare home visiting initiative, the most that the Connecticut Legislature has done is pass Public Act 178 in 2013 which requires that the Office of Early Childhood provide recommendations to improve home visiting services. 

Still, seen in the light of the millions and millions of dollars for the Fatherhood Initiative, and also in the light of the millions and millions of dollars provided for Access and Visitation programs, further millions and millions of dollars for home visits to check and see how mothers are taking care of their children--well, I could be forgiven for finding this massive funding of home visits considerably alarming. 

In fact, I will say that this massive amount of funding--the numbers are quite extraordinary when you start to add them up--simply for the purpose of shaping how family members interact with each other and choose to establish the contexts--medical, religious, educational, relational--in which they live represents one of the most far reaching experiments our society has ever faced in the entire history of the United States.  

The results have already been rolling in as thousands of citizens across the country have accused our government of child trafficking through DCF and of massive judicial court corruption where parents have been denied their constitutional right to parent without cause. More recently, there was the case of West Hartford's Justina Pelletier in which Massachusetts DCF spent an estimated $2 million trying to steal Justina from her parents using false accusations of medical abuse.  

Where is this all heading?  

While "Liberty News" may not have bought into the federal government's propaganda that these home visiting programs will be "purely voluntary", this does not mean that it was entirely inaccurate.  We all need to be very concerned about what is going on here.

SMALL JUSTICE: COURTS FAIL PROTECTIVE MOTHERS AND THEIR ABUSED CHILDREN!

ANNE STEVENSON REPORTS GEORGIA COURT GIVING CUSTODY TO POSSIBLE SEXUAL PREDATORS!

"ATLANTA, June 26, 2014 — According to court records, throughout 2011-2012, “Jane’s” children (then ages 2 and 7) repeatedly insisted and showed credible evidence to child psychologist Nancy McGarrah, Ph.D and Ann Shannon, LCSW, that that their father made suicidal and homicidal plans with them, that he routinely watched child porn with them and sexually assaulted them during overnight visits.

Court orders show that Cobb County, Georgia Family Court Judge C Latain Kell has repeatedly ordered Jane’s children back into the unsupervised care of their alleged rapist, even after the Walton County Department of Family And Children’s Services (DFCS) issued a report substantiating emotional and sexual abuse allegations against the father.

Perhaps in retrospect, the Atlanta based divorcee would not have cooperated with child protection authorities if she had known from the start that it would cost her hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal industry professional fees, while at the same time, creating a perverse incentive for the Court to order the children to spend even more time with their alleged attacker."

For more information on this article, please click on the link below:

http://www.commdiginews.com/life/georgia-court-may-have-given-sex-predator-custody-of-child-victims-19453/#7fQ6RXUdQ0mobPXQ.99

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN JUDGES INSIST UPON ABUSERS GAINING ACCESS TO THEIR VICTIMS!

HOW ABUSERS USE ACCUSATIONS OF BOGUS MENTAL ILLNESS (PARENTAL ALIENATION SYNDROME) TO SEIZE CONTROL OF THEIR VICTIMS IN FAMILY COURT!

HOW ACCUSATIONS OF PAS AND FALSE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE BENEFITS OF TWO PARENT HOUSEHOLDS PERPETUATE SPOUSAL ABUSE!

Sara Schoener of the "New York Times" exposes the truth about two parent households and false accusations of PAS:

"AFTER spending two years studying services for domestic violence survivors, I was surprised to realize that one of the most common barriers to women’s safety was something I had never considered before: the high value our culture places on two-parent families.

I began my research in 2011, the year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than one-third of American women are assaulted by an intimate partner during their lives. I talked to women in communities that ranged from a small rural mining town to a large global city, in police stations, criminal courts, emergency shelters, job placement centers and custody proceedings. I found that almost all of the women with children I interviewed had maintained contact with their abusers. Why?"

For more information, please click on the link below:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/opinion/sunday/domestic-violence-and-two-parent-households.html?_r=3&referrer=

HEALTHY MARRIAGE INITIATIVE RENEWED DESPITE EXTREMELY MODEST RESULTS!

On August 22, 1996, Congress signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) which transformed our welfare system by replacing AFDC (Aid to Families With Dependent Children) with TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families).  The thrust behind this legislation was to get people off welfare and back into the workforce, particularly single mothers.

In the heels of that reform, in 2001 Congress began to provide limited financial support for the Healthy Marriage Initiative which was established with the intention of helping "couples who choose to get married gain greater access to marriage education services that will enable them to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to form and sustain a healthy marriage." 

A few years later, this initiative had grown considerably and garnered substantially more support.  Thus, in 2005, Wade Horn, then Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, spoke before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce about the need to expand the programs Healthy Marriage Initiative on a massive scale alongside Responsible Fatherhood programs stating, "our proposal seeks to improve child well-being through programs aimed at encouraging responsible fatherhood and healthy marriages." 

Already by 2005, Wade Horn was able to state that his agency, the Administration For Children and Families, was providing $200 million for programs aimed at promoting family formation and healthy marriage as well as $40 million for the support of responsible fatherhood and healthy marriage programs which he felt was necessary to stem the tide of fatherlessness and its destructive impact on children. 

This decision to spend millions and millions of dollars to promote a particular lifestyle--marriage--represents one of the most extraordinary levels of social manipulation that the federal government has ever undertaken. 

Two conservative think tanks--the Heritage Foundation and the Brookings Institute fully supported this ambitious effort.  As representatives of the Heritage Foundation explained, "The erosion of marriage during the past four decades...lies at the heart of many of the social problems with which the government currently grapples."  Further, the Heritage Foundation stated, "By fostering better life decisions and stronger relationship skills, marriage programs can increase child well-being and adult happiness and reduce child poverty and welfare dependence." (See "Backgrounder", March 26, 2004, by Robert E. Rector and Melissa G. Pardue).  The initial budget supporters proposed for this program was $300 million per year. 

At the same time that these Healthy Marriage programs were instituted throughout the country, the Federal government took steps to measure whether they led to the kinds of positive results which were greatly anticipated.  Thus, in 2003, the government began the "Supporting Healthy Marriage Project" to conduct research on the success of these programs. These research efforts were headed by the New York City based Manpower Development Research Corporation (MDRC) and Abt Associates. 

As a point of interest, according to USASpending.gov, from 2009 to 2012 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services paid $30 million to MDRC for their research on the Healthy Marriage Initiative, and that is only for one segment of the time they spent on this project.  The actual report on their results came out in January 2014. 

So, what were the results of the study? 

Basically, the results indicated that the Healthy Marriage Initiative had no significant effects on the families throughout America despite the massive expenditure of resources that it represented.  The complete text of the Study's key results appears below: 

Key Findings

• SHM did not lead more couples to stay together.

• SHM produced a consistent pattern of sustained small positive effects on couples’ relation-ships. Compared with the control group at 30 months, the program group reported higher levels of marital happiness; lower levels of marital distress and infidelity; greater warmth, support, and positive communication; and less antagonistic and hostile behaviors in their interactions with their spouses. The program group also reported experiencing less psychological abuse than the control group. These impacts are similar to the impacts reported at 12 months. Reports of physical assault at 30 months were not prevalent and were not significantly affected by SHM.

• SHM reduced women’s feelings of sadness and anxiety, but it did not significantly affect the outcome for men at 30 months. While the impact for women is small, the improvement is of interest because parental distress is linked with less positive parenting and with increased be-havior problems for children.

• SHM had little effect on indicators of coparenting, parenting, or child well-being. Of the outcomes examined, only a few of the impact estimates are significant. Moreover, the magnitudes of these impacts are very small, and the results did not remain statistically significant after additional statistical tests were conducted to adjust for the number of outcomes examined.

Overall, SHM was well implemented, but it was fairly expensive to operate, and it did not achieve some of its central objectives –– increasing the likelihood that parents stayed together or measurably benefiting children living in such households. As policymakers consider possible future directions for programs that support marriage and relationships, it will be important to focus on how best to target services to those most likely to benefit, which aspects of SHM should be included in future tests, and which should be altered in an effort to bolster program impacts and reduce costs.

Despite these miserable results, the Department of Health and Human Services intends to continue these grants throughout the year 2014 and possibly through 2015 as well. 

Why? 

According to the information sheet on this subject, "ACF decided to continue the current grantees for an additional year in order to increase the consistency and stability in programs.  The current grantees are making good progress toward achieving program goals and an additional year will enable them to increase service provision, including employment and career advancement.  In addition, an additional one-year continuation grant would enhance The Parents and Children together (PACT) and Fatherhood Re-entry ("re-entry" is doublespeak for criminals who are being released from jail) research evaluations of Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) programs currently underway by enabling more refined analysis and findings."

In other words, they intend to scramble through the pile of the unmitigated mess these programs represent and see if there is anything--anything that they can possibly find to rescue them from the judgment of their very own investigative team that the programs they created have failed miserably. 

I was just checking to see how this may affect the State of Connecticut.  From what I see there are no Healthy Marriage Grantees in the State of Connecticut for the year 2013.  However, we do have one Responsible Fatherhood Grantee--Catholic Charities, Inc., of the Archdiocese of Hartford which received $800,000, and, from what I gather, has received a similar amount from the federal government on an annual basis for several years. 

If anyone else has a comment on some of these numbers, I'd be interested in hearing it.  This is not to say that other money isn't pouring into the State from other avenues.

Again, as I have commented in other blogs, what appears to be happening with the investment of millions of dollars in fatherhood programs from the federal government is the implementation of highly profitable custody switching schemes which has led to a striking rise in families headed by single fathers with sole custody of their children--hardly the result that these healthy marriage advocates were looking for!