Summit County sheriff urges Congress to keep funding voluntary home visit programs
As Summit County’s sheriff, I oversee more than 400 employees. I started my law enforcement career far more modestly, paying my way through the police academy as a struggling single mother, then as the only woman on the first police force on which I served. It’s been a long journey.
What I’m most grateful about during that journey is that I overcame the challenges of being a single mother when I was in the police academy. That’s one reason I instinctively understand the value of tools that help young parents succeed and help young children be ready for school and safe from trouble. The best anti-crime policies are early childhood investments that have been proven to lead to better outcomes for young people.
That’s why I’m a member of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a national organization whose members are police chiefs, sheriffs and prosecutors. I’m living proof that, if a single mother has the support she needs to raise a child, both she and the child have a better chance of success. I understand how important it is for parents to have knowledge about healthy childhood development and creating a safe home environment.
Voluntary home visiting is one such intervention that can help educate and strengthen families. For 2,100 Ohio families and nearly 150,000 families nationwide, voluntary home visiting programs give at-risk parents coaching on parenting skills, pediatric care, available sources of public assistance and other topics that can give their children a better start in life. Crucially, these programs have also been shown to reduce child abuse and neglect.
The majority of funding for these voluntary home visits come from the federal government. That funding, known as the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) federal funding stream, requires program operators to show successful outcomes to ensure funds are being used most effectively. Because of the evidence-based outcome requirements, there has been bipartisan agreement that the effort is worth continuing and expanding.
Model home visiting programs funded by MIECHV are programs that have passed state and federal scrutiny for evidence-based effectiveness. Ohio’s MIECHV-funded models include NurseFamily Partnership, Parents as Teachers, and Healthy Families America. These programs feature program-specific goals: in the case of Parents as Teachers, for example, those goals include preventing child abuse and neglect, increasing children’s school readiness and success, and improving family economic well-being.
Although many states, including Ohio, invest in voluntary home visits above and beyond the federal funds, there has never been enough funding to serve more than a small percentage of the at-risk families who qualify. In Ohio, just 1.5 percent of Ohio’s over 146,000 highest-priority families currently have access to voluntary home visiting services.
And now, even that funding is at risk. Progress has been made toward renewing the MIECHV, but absent congressional passage, it will expire on Dec. 16. Here in Ohio, those 2,100 Ohio families will lose access if the funding dries up, according to a new fact sheet from Council for a Strong America, the parent organization of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids.
A bill that has a chance to clear Congress would ensure the home visits continue: The Jackie Walorski Maternal and Child Home Visiting Reauthorization Act, which passed the House Ways and Means Committee in September. The Walorski Act would greatly increase MIECHV funding over five years, including funding for voluntary home visiting programs in Ohio.
When I started my law enforcement career, I was a single mother responding to situations that sometimes involved single mothers. Now I’m a grandmother of six. Thus, I know from multiple perspectives that voluntary home visits inform better parenting and are of enormous value to vulnerable parents and their children. I hope we can renew and strengthen this vital resource.
Kandy Fatheree was elected Summit County sheriff in 2021 after 27 years in the Sheriff’s Department. Prior to that she was a Lakemore police officer for three years.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Summit Sheriff Kandy Fatheree supports voluntary home visits
