UTAH LAW ENFORCEMENT THANKS SENATOR HATCH AND CONGRESSIONAL COLLEAGUES FOR MAKING MOTHER’S DAY 2015 AN EVENT TO REMEMBER
Just in time for Mother’s Day, Senator Orrin Hatch and his colleagues in Congress have found common ground in the passage of legislation that will create better lives for young parents and kids while creating safer communities in the coming years.
Commonly referred to as the “Doc Fix” bill, and recognized as one of the biggest achievements of the current Congress, the legislation provides a two-year extension of the Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
Created with strong bipartisan support in 2010, MIECHV provides federal funding for voluntary "home visiting" services for young, low-income women and their children. These programs bring trained nurses or other trained mentors into the women's homes to help them understand their children's emotional needs, make their homes safe for children, and respond appropriately to stressful parenting situations. Since 2010, MIECHV has provided more than $15 million for home visiting in Utah.
CHIP, which was also created with bipartisan support, provides health insurance to more than 65,000 kids in Utah families who cannot afford private health insurance but earn too much in annual income to qualify for Medicaid.
More than 70 Utah police chiefs, sheriffs and prosecutors are lauding Congress for supporting these programs based on research that shows the impact between maternal and child health on public safety. As noted in a recent Fight Crime: Invest in Kids report, Orange is Not Your Color, a randomized controlled trial of a Nurse Family Partnership (NFP) home visiting program in Elmira, NY found that 15 years after the program began, high-risk mothers who did not receive home visits had more than three times as many crime convictions as those who did participate.
The report also spotlighted research showing quality home visiting programs have a range of other positive outcomes including reductions in infant mortality. NFP, for example, produces a net savings of over $17,000 for every family served based on impact on improved children’s health, reductions in abuse and neglect, increased readiness for school and reductions in future crime.
Fight Crime: Invest in Kids reports also show that without health coverage, many children and teens will not have access to therapies for drug and alcohol abuse problems or treatments that empower individuals to deal with mental health challenges – which increase the risk of criminal behavior.
Providing coverage to pay for substance abuse and mental health is also a smart financial decision, since an individual who drops out of high school, abuses drugs and becomes a career criminal costs society an average of $2.5 million over a lifetime.
Fight Crime: Invest in Kids is a non-profit, non-partisan organization of nearly 5,000 police chiefs, sheriffs and prosecutors that promotes research-proven strategies for reducing crime through effective investments in youth. Learn more at www.fightcrime.org.
