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CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT POLICY

Every year, thousands of Pennsylvania children are traumatized by abuse and neglect. Children who survive this maltreatment carry the emotional scars for life. The best available research indicates that, of the 4,390 Pennsylvania children who were confirmed victims of abuse and neglect in 2005, more than 175 will become violent criminals as adults who would otherwise avoid such crimes if not for the abuse or neglect they endured as kids.

Fight Crime: Invest in Kids Pennsylvania calls on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to fund programs proven to cut abuse and neglect. Specifically, we support increased funding to the Nurse Family Partnership program, in which at-risk families (primarily identified as first-time, single, low-income mothers) voluntarily receive visits by specially trained nurses who provide coaching in parenting skills and other advice and support. Rigorous research originally published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows the program prevents as many as half of all cases of abuse or neglect among at-risk families. By the time the children of the mothers in the program were age 15, they had 59 percent fewer arrests than the similar children of mothers left out of the program.

The Nurse Family Partnership program currently serves 35 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties, but only a fraction of the families who could most benefit from it.