Home Visitation Legislation Gets Key Support: Senate Chair Backs $1.5 Billion in Funding

Congress is back in session and new home visitation funding is back on track after Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus included $1.5 billion over five years for the work in his version of health care reform.

The Finance Committee is slated to take up Baucus’s plan – the chairman’s “mark” should serve as a starting point – this Tuesday. While less ambitious than President Barack Obama’s proposal to spend $8.6 billion over ten years on home visitation, Sen. Baucus’s plan is interesting.

Overall, the Senate bill would create a state grant program for early childhood home visitation.

As part of that plan, the bill would require states to rely on proven and research-based programs, but it also would leave room for experimentation. It would allow a grantee to spend 25 percent of their funds on a promising new program, which would be “rigorously evaluated.”

The bill would allocate three percent for research and evaluation, which sounds a little low for an area with a need for a lot of innovation and flexibility.

Groups that won funding “would be required to establish appropriate process and three and five year outcome benchmarks to measure improvement in maternal and child health, childhood injury prevention, school readiness, juvenile delinquency, family economic factors, and coordination with community resources.” – “Chairman’s Mark America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009.”

It is too early to say what if any home visitation program and funding will become law this year. But with the Obama administration backing the idea and versions in the

House and Senate health care reform bills, it seems like fresh funding could make it to the president’s desk.

(Thanks to The Early Ed Watch Blog for finding this news.)

Further reading:

• “Chairman’s Mark America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009.”
• Early Ed Watch Blog, “Home Visitation Program Appears in Latest Health Care Proposal.”