Child Advocates Descend on DC in Defense of Home Visiting and Abuse Prevention.

In response to child advocates, including representatives from the Prevent Child Abuse chapter network, descending on the national capital today and calling for the reauthorization of the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program and for the Child Abuse and Prevention Treatment Act (CAPTA) to be fully funded we released a press release titled "Child Advocates Descend on DC in Defense of Home Visiting and Abuse Prevention." We hope you will take a look and let us know if you have any questions. We have also pasted an excerpt below.

"MIECHV supports evidence-based home visiting initiatives that provide the support, experience and knowledge critical to success during pregnancy and through the first few years of a child’s life. Among the programs supported by MIECHV is Healthy Families America (HFA), Prevent Child Abuse America’s signature prevention program, that provides more than 86,000 families annually with services that are proven to increase the knowledge and skill of parents, improve the early learning abilities of children, reduce incidences of child maltreatment, and improve overall family self-sufficiency.

Currently, MIECHV is set to expire at the end of March. If Congress fails to reauthorize MIECHV, tens of thousands of families across the country would lose access to home visiting services like HFA, and thousands of family support workers would find their jobs in jeopardy.

CAPTA is a historic law that dates to 1974 and is one of the major ways that the federal government funds state programs that prevent and reduce child abuse and neglect. In fiscal year 2015, CAPTA state grants were funded at a level of $26 million, a number so low that resulted in some states receiving less than $100,000 to cover the costs associated with child protection, reporting, and investigation of claims."