Prevention services for families at risk of being involved with the child welfare system do work.  If we address the causes of child abuse and neglect, we can prevent families from ever becoming fully involved with the child welfare system.  If we offer supports to families to care for their children, these children will never have to come into the foster care system.  If we value families as the primary place children should be raised, then we must do everything that we can to (1) keep them in their own families or (2) move them into the family of a relative, or (3) secure a permanent family for them through adoption.  Family centered practices can produce big savings for the state. 

Poor single parent families are particularly challenged with raising a child.  While most poor single parents do a successful job in raising their children, the difficulties of achieving good outcomes are immense. (The difficulties that they confront are great.) They have huge challenges to raise children who will grow up thriving, healthy and ready to learn when they enter school. 

Congress is looking favorably at evidence- based home visitation programs.  Home visitation is an investment that can yield substantial improvements in child health and development, readiness for school, reductions in child abuse and neglect, and parents’ abilities to support children’s optimal cognitive, language, social-emotional, and physical development. Studies of home visitation programs have demonstrated favorable effects on outcomes for mothers and children, including prenatal health, timing of subsequent pregnancies, childhood injuries, adolescent delinquency, and use of welfare and food stamps. Expanding proven effective home visitation programs is estimated to save the Federal Budget in Medicaid spending more than $664 million over 10 years.

We know that family centered practices pay rich dividends for the state.  Fewer children are in care, they are safer, they are less traumatized, they are in foster care for shorter periods of time, they contact the child welfare system less often and they are more connected with their biological families and siblings.

The continued investment by the State and the private sector in supporting families is showing remarkable results for Georgia.  The continued support, both politically and financially, need to continue.