EdAction
Maple River Education Coalition PAC
105 Peavey Rd, St 116 
Chaska, MN  55318 
952-361-4931
http://www.EdAction.org
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March 3, 2000

Below is great testimony before the Minnesota House Committee on bill SF3141 sponsored by Linda Boudreau for universal home visitation funding. It is one more piece of a large puzzle: collecting data on children and families, government making parents accountable to the government, etc. It looks like this program may have been passed last year but not funded, funding to come this year.  We are trying to track down its history and present funding, but have not got to the bottom of it yet.

Mr. (Madame) Chair and Members,

Thank you for this opportunity to speak.  I am Karen Effrem, here as a parent, a pediatrician, and a taxpayer to testify against the portion of SF3141 that funds home visitation programs.

Child abuse is an extremely difficult problem, and home visitation programs are a well-intentioned, but flawed method of dealing with it. After reading this nearly 60 page study, speaking with the authors personally, and researching data privacy and parental rights, I can see no reason whatsoever to spend over a million dollars of taxpayer money to fund these programs.

Six control group studies done on targeted home visitation programs showed either no reduction in substantiated child abuse and neglect rates or actual increases in child abuse rates in the groups receiving the home visits.

One other Federal HHS study on a comprehensive home visitation program designed to enhance children's cognitive development similar to the universal home visitation program funded in this bill was done.  Despite an average of 3 years in the program and $47,000 of services per family, there was no improvement in cognitive development and an actual, though not statistically significant, increase in child deaths in the group receiving the services compared to control.

A Rand Corporation study found some cost benefit savings for the very highest risk single mothers in the best designed program, but not for lower risk situations nor in the types of programs in this bill.

There are also serious concerns about unconsented review of private medical records, whether consent is informed and voluntary for participation, that the home visitors are required to have only a minimum of 5 days of training, that they may be presenting information that is not scientifically supportable or violates the government's duty to maintain neutrality with respect to deeply held personal beliefs, that the investigative role of the home visitors is not made clear, that participants are submitting to a search of their homes without informed consent violating their 4th Amendment rights, and that vast amounts of personal data is being collected, maintained and disseminated without informed consent in violation of state and federal data practices statutes.

There are other less expensive and constitutionally safer alternatives to deal with the complex and tragic problem of child abuse.  These programs are expensive Big Brotherism at its worst and I urge their defeat.

EdAction - 105 Peavey Rd, Ste 116, Chaska, MN  55318 
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