Child advocates, community leaders, law enforcement and social service providers gathered Friday at the state Capitol to oppose proposed cuts to the state Health Department’s Office of Child Abuse Prevention.
Health Commissioner Terry Cline last week said if the Health Department’s budget is cut by 5 percent he would eliminate the Office of Child Abuse Prevention, a statutorily created office aimed at providing services to at-risk families to prevent child abuse.
“Our state legislature and the state agencies that are responsible for the health and well-being of children must protect children – especially children who are at risk of being victims of abuse or neglect,” said Linda Terrell, executive director of the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy.
The Office of Child Abuse Prevention has contractors across the state and in rural areas that provide services where risk factors such as poverty and low income are prevalent. A loss of state dollars to the Office of Child Abuse Prevention will also mean a loss of federal dollars that help pay for the home visitation program for parents in need of services.
“The best approach to limited resources is to invest what we have where it will do the most good, and have the greatest impact. There is no doubt that preventing child abuse and neglect should be our first priority,” said Dr. Robert Block, Oklahoma’s chief child abuse examiner and president-elect of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“The health and mental health consequences of ignoring the lifetime consequences of abuse and neglect are many, complex, and very, very expensive,” Block said. “We must think beyond the dollars of a one year budget if we are ever going to move Oklahoma out of last place in almost every measure of health.”
Block, is also a professor of pediatrics at the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa School of Community Medicine.
Sgt. Jennifer Newell with the Norman Police Department said officers who investigate cases of alleged abuse are not seeing a decrease in their work.
“As a police officer, our job is not getting easier,” said Newell, who is also the president of the board for the Center for Children and Families, Inc. in Norman. “Detectives who investigate alleged abuse and neglect are busier than ever.”
As lawmakers draft the budget in the upcoming legislative session, they are grappling with a nearly $400 million to $600 million budget hole. In these tight budget times, lawmakers and agency directors must make tough decisions. However, the budget should not be balanced on the backs of children — who can’t vote and have little voice in the political process.
“We are looking at economic development and ignoring the development of our human capital – and doing that at a time in a person’s life when they are most vulnerable,” said Pat Potts, president of the Potts Family Foundation. The foundation supports investment in early childhood programs.
“If we discontinue those prevention programs that we know work, we are staying in a state of punishment, instead of prevention,” Potts said. “I don’t believe that’s what legislators want and I don’t believe that’s what citizens want.”
Charlie Swinton, a board member for the Parents Promise Program, a child abuse prevention program affiliated with the Exchange Club, urged Cline and lawmakers to fund child abuse prevention programs that have proven results.
“This is playing the political game of ‘which program can we cut to match the funding cut’ and it impacts children who can’t vote. We think Oklahoma can do better that,” Swinton said. “We need to protect children. Prevention programs work.”
Terrell pointed out that cuts to preventative services violate OICA’s Guiding Principles, a set of principles formulated by hundreds Oklahomans during OICA’s Children’s Fall Legislative Forum in October 2010. The principles were drafted to guide lawmakers and agency heads as they consider budget cuts.
Eliminating critical programs that serve children violates a key provision that says: Cutting programs that serve children, including the vulnerable adults in their families, should be the last place to look for savings.
Some of the other principles include:
- Invest in prevention.
- Protect services to high risk/high needs populations.
- Avoid cutting state dollars that will impact federal funding.
The Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy, is a non-partisan, 501(c)(3), non-profit organization. For more information go to www.oica.org.
