Opinion: Keeping children safe from abuse

Healthy Families Florida, the voluntary program that provides home visits to parents at risk of abusing their newborns, is at a critical juncture. Three years after its creation, Healthy Families may have to cut its services dramatically -- one casualty could be a promising local outreach project in Hillsborough County -- unless Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida lawmakers intervene next session.

This will be the biggest test yet of the state's commitment to child-abuse prevention. With the backing of Bush, Healthy Families was launched in 1998 to great fanfare, and it has been an unqualified success. But even now, Healthy Families workers are able to counsel less than one-third of the high-risk new parents needing their services. The program deserves to be expanded, not scaled back, so that it can become a permanent and a healthy partner in the transition to community-based care and in the protection of Florida's young lives.

Healthy Families' base funding has been $22.2-million, and that's all the Department of Children and Families, recognizing the new budget realities in Tallahassee, has requested for next year. But that amount is no longer sufficient to cover even those families currently participating in Healthy Families, much less to begin serving the 24,000 new parents who desperately need its services. Unless Healthy Families receives an additional $12-million this session, program leaders say, it will have to drop more than 1,500 families now being served and close its doors to new, at-risk families.

Despite all the pressures on the state budget and economic uncertainty, Bush and lawmakers have good reason to shore up the program. A new study this summer documented its success in preventing abuse. That comes as no surprise to those counties, including Pinellas, that pioneered the home-visitation model. Home visits to prevent abuse cost $3,200 per family each year, while the investigation and foster care necessary to respond to abuse costs $20,000 per child annually, according to department figures. With communities soon to assume the lead in child-welfare under Bush's community-based plan, Healthy Families will be a key element in keeping costs down and in keeping children safe.

Now is the wrong time to be denying families this vital state support, given the direct relationship between financial woes and the risk of abuse or neglect. The budget pressures felt in the halls of Tallahassee are only magnified in the homes of Florida's high-risk parents, especially those with the added responsibilities of a new baby. As the economy weakens, stress can build and, along with it, the possibility of abuse or neglect.

Using a nearly $1-million grant from lawmakers, Hillsborough's Healthy Families is making a new effort to sign up all at-risk teen moms, even those living outside zip codes now being served. The problem is, the funds awarded were non-recurring welfare-reform dollars, and there's no guarantee they will be made available next year or beyond.

State Rep. Sandra Murman, R-Tampa, who worked hard to win the grant for Hillsborough (as part of the Suncoast region), is optimistic. "I think the likelihood is very good the program will be able to continue on," she said. "That money's certainly on my priority list." We hope the governor and other lawmakers share her view. With 85 Florida children last year lost forever to abuse or neglect, and another 85,000 children harmed, how can Florida afford not to make Healthy Families, and the parents and newborns it serves, a state priority?

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