This just IRKS ME to no end...

[BrendaBrick]

(Grant it, it's dated 7-20-11 - but I just read about it):

Florida spurns $50 million for child-abuse prevention

A pot of $50 million for child-abuse prevention — tied to the national healthcare reform act — has been rejected by Florida.
By Carol Marbin Miller
[e-mail]

Florida lawmakers have rejected more than $50 million in federal child-abuse prevention money. The grants were tied to the Obama administration’s healthcare reform package, which many lawmakers oppose on philosophical grounds.

The money, offered through the federal Affordable Health Care Act passed last year, would have paid, among other things, for a visiting nurse program run by Healthy Families Florida, one of the most successful child-abuse prevention efforts in the nation. Healthy Families’ budget was cut in last year’s spending plan by close to $10 million.

And because the federal Race to the Top educational-reform effort is tied to the child-abuse prevention program that Healthy Families administers, the state may also lose a four-year block grant worth an additional $100 million in federal dollars, records show.

“This is just crazy,” said Gwen Wurm, assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of Miami, and a board member of the Our Kids foster care agency. “This is the model for what you want in a prevention program. They have proven results.”

Healthy Families, which started with a $10 million budget in 1998, provides trained home visitors — many of whom are nurses — to work with young parents who, based on a questionnaire filled out at child birth, are deemed at risk of abusing or neglecting their children. The visitors offer guidance on everything from healthy eating habits and early childhood development to recognizing safety hazards, such as pools and sweltering, sealed automobiles.

Wurm said the model is particularly effective because it is hands-on and offers parents concrete advice on how to care for their kids — not just a laundry list of things they shouldn’t do. “If I just tell you, ‘Do not shake your baby,’ and your baby is still screaming, I have not solved your problem,” Wurm said. “They are not just telling parents what not to do.”

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/07/20/2323475/florida-spurns-50-million-for.html#ixzz1YiDf9Dds

I'm just beside myself in reading this! Not only for obvious short-term reasons, but more importantly for the long-term, systemic, positive applications and prevention this could have addressed for generations to come. What a loss. What an absolute loss. I knew that some Republicans were heartless, but my word....THIS? With PROVEN RESULTS???? Incredible ~

[gratuitous]

1. You'd think someone could make a campaign issue out of this

But apparently, it's too difficult to explain to people how healthier, better-fed babies and children grow up to be healthier adults. So the Republicans get elected again to complain about all those welfare babies (you know the ones we mean, *wink wink*) sucking up all those tax dollars they don't deserve.

[BrendaBrick]

5. About the campaign issue, I was thinking the same thing!!!

[Vincardog]

2. What can you expect from a party who holds up homicidal psychopaths as role models?

[librechik]

3. nope, not loans. GRANTS. And yet they have to slap the charitable hand that offers it

because it belongs to We the People, not God Himself. I know they won't even think of it the next time a child comes up abused or missing. Wasn't there a huge case in Florida just recently that had everyone OUTRAGED? No Florida, you won't get a chance to stop that sort of thing because your governor is a Republican.

MADNESS

[Blue Owl]

4. Good thing Georgia is conveniently located next door

Just have a crooked cop frame those abused kids and send 'em to death row.

:sarcasm:

[Wait Wut]

6. Disgusting.

I'm going to assume that these "lawmakers" are made up of mostly Republicans.

Force them to be born.
Don't help feed, educate or keep them healthy.
Let them be abused, neglected, tortured.
Put them in prisons.
Kill them.

Fuck these heartless pricks. Fuck them and their "abstinence only" education that they continue to fund despite all the studies proving it's failure. Fuck them and their anti-choice bullshit. If had to base my opinions of Christianity on the actions of these subhumans, I'd be just as vocal as they are with their anti-Muslim rhetoric. Hypocritical scum.

Those poor children. They deserve better.

[kayakjohnny]

8. You have the makings of a powerful OP ....

Force them to be born.
Don't help feed, educate or keep them healthy.
Let them be abused, neglected, tortured.
Put them in prisons.
Kill them.

That was strong and to the point.

And terribly true.

[Wait Wut]

9. Thank you.

Sadly, OPs about child abuse go frequently unnoticed. Like this one. This should be a huge topic for support of abused children. Barely a handful of comments and only 10 recs? Sad. While I'm as confused and heartbroken about the recent execution of Mr. Davis, this doesn't mean we can't also feel the same anger and heartbreak about this decision in Florida. Florida has just effectively condemned children to be held captive and executed by their abusers.

All to often, even among Democrats, adults mean more than children. We can educate the parents. We can make a difference in the lives of abused children. But, not in Florida, apparently.

Thanks again for the kind words. More importantly, thank you for your support.

[kayakjohnny]

10. You're welcome. Something about the way you worded it totally resonated with me.

I'm going to save and share your sentiment if you don't mind.

It tells the whole sad story in five simple lines.

Thank you again for this.

[sinkingfeeling]

7. Can Arkansas have what Florida rejected?