the families benefit from the support of services which range from natal medical care to health services to family literacy programs for many parents the most valuable support these programs provide has been emotional for military families who often face unique parenting circumstances home visits can make a world of difference when one parent is deployed or returning from the overseas duty the parents as teachers program at the fort bragg military base in north carolina helped one mother going through an especially hard time during her husband's multiple deployments when a young son began acting out aggressively in child care and he was in a talk to his father on the phone during his rotations paresis teacher staff help the mother find ways to develop a closer bond a better communications between her husband and son  several of our experts will explain today early childhood home visitation programs provide far reaching benefits helping to increase student achievement improve access to preventative medical care reduce high school dropout rate and decrease maternal depression for example according to an evaluation of the parent child home program in south carolina ninety three percent of the program participate participants who are eligible for free lunch pass the state's first grade skills assessment and contrast only seventy four percent of the free lunch eligible students overall as joan all of the bush administration's commission on children youth and families recently highlighted home visits aren't effective approach to preventing child abuse by helping parents deal with the stresses of raising children yet for far too long the federal government has not invested enough in programs to support families and children during these first years of life the education begins at home act would create for the first time a federal funding framework for home visitation programs ensuring that the federal government plays a role in helping communities better plan for and provide quality services for families it would authorize four hundred million dollars in grants to states tribal organizations and territories over three years the bill would also create competitive grant programs to expand access to home visitation services for military families and families with limited english proficiency in addition the bill would help states create partnerships between programs and related community services preparing children for success in schools and life begin at home this legislation is about strengthening supporting families and investment that is in the best interest of our children our communities and our future i'd like to welcome again all of our witnesses and thank them for joining us today and especially like to thank congressman danny mr mckeen is on his way and we will recognize him when he comes in for the purposes of making an opening statement and with that i'd like to recognize our panel and introduce them to the to the committee dr heather weiss is the founder and director of the harvard family research project and is a senior research associate a lecturer at harvard graduate school of education dr weiss received her doctorate of education social policy from harvard graduate school of education and she was post doctoral research fellow at the yale bush center in child development and social policy her latest publications include several articles reporting on her longitudinal study and ways in which family involvement in children's learning promotes a development and school success julie family our next witness and her husband victor found they are originally from conroe texas and early two thousand and seven he was relocated to virginia beach virginia where mr family enlisted in the u s navy missed a missing family participate in parents as teachers program which is based in zero four naval station and have two children zain who is two years old and megan who is seven years old mr family is an aviation structural mechanic airman apprentice at no four the naval station and this isn't his full time parent supportive navy than thirty years of helping chicago social service provider be it a faculty member a substitute teacher a leader in the public health community director of a community learning  in this capacity as head of that unit as did because the lead attorney responsible for cases dealing with child abuse and homicide in allegheny county her experience includes one hundred thirty jury trials and more than twenty homicide trials additionally ms did as an adjunct professor at the community college of allegheny county and the chairwoman of the allegheny county arbitration division today misted it will be testifying on behalf of fight crime invest in kids an organization of more than four thousand police chiefs sheriffs prosecutors and victims of violence i look forward to hearing her commit her testimony and highly recommended to the committee welcome to the welcome to the committee william as as an attorney and the director of federal relations for the home school legal defense association where you served as a director of federal relations for two years during this time has worked on numerous side militias that are of interest to the homeschool community in the united states jeannie smart is a registered nurse who is a director of the nurse family partnership program for los angeles county department of public health where she directs all nursing home visiting programs within the state's maternal child and adolescent health programs she also represents the department of inner agency operations group for senior level managers from the county's health and human services agency she has worked as a community based public health nurse in some of the highest risk areas of l a county and also been a public health nursing instructor at california state los angeles and california long beach welcome and with that i'd like to turn to the senior republican on the committee mr mckeon for his opening statement and then we'll begin with your testimony will begin with you dr weiss when mr mcinnis done thank you general is recognized thank you chairman miller and good morning i apologize for being late we're here today to examine the education begins at home act a bill that authorized approximately half a billion dollars to establish or expand programs to provide home visitation services for families i appreciate that we're here for a legislative hearing particularly given the significant size and scope of this proposal today's hearing gives us an important opportunity to consider not only the broad concept of home visitations which are generally intended to improve child development child health and wellness and parenting practices but also to look at the specific details of the legislation that has been proposed in recent years our committee is focused on authorizing and funding programs with proven results we know the programs backed by sound scientific research can help ensure more meaningful results results for children a goal we all share whether we're talking about effective reading and mathematics instruction or head start form or any number of other programs to that end i'm anxious to hear more today about the research surrounding home visitation programs what effects have been demonstrated when it comes to cognitive development school preparedness and parenting skills have some programs been shown to be more effective than others or home visits helpful in their own right or only when paired with other services i'm also interested in a discussion about how best to target federal resources traditionally federal intervention in this area have focused on disadvantaged children take the early head start program for example in that program we explored the use of home visits to strengthen parenting skills and cognitive development in a way that complements the services provided through early head start this approach ensures that we're reaching the children most likely to require additional support in order to start school on par with their more advantaged peers today's hearing will allow us to explore these and any other questions about the education begins at home i want to thank our distinguished panel of witnesses for joining us sharing their views and allowing us to benefit from their buried areas of expertise there are a range of perspectives on this issue each of which will be valuable in our deliberations i intend to focus today on the harvard family research project i know the forty years of research that shows that parenting and family prophecies are one of if not the strongest predictor of kid's development and school and life  they are the strongest predictors i think of cognitive social and emotional development and therefore a very powerful source of improving outcomes for kids i know from recent reviews that i've done with colleagues that children and youth with involved and supportive and nurturing parents from birth through adolescence are likely to do to succeed in school they're going to be ready for  likely to get better grades they're more likely to graduate from high school and also they're more likely to go to college or have some kind of post secondary success what sensually home visits in the early years do is set a pathway of parent involvement that begins at birth and continues through school and when you create that pathway you increase the likelihood of the long term benefits we want for kids and that's high school graduation with a kilt the skills they need to succeed in college or post secondary education and then of the global economy and world so this sounds great what do we know from research about whether or not early voluntary early childhood visitation is a good public policy investment i look at this through the lens of three questions what's the evidence of how visiting creates positive changes in parenting that results in better outcomes for children  families what's the evidence that the whole visiting field is ready to scale up and that will produce these positive outcomes at scale this is a big public policy investment what is the research tell us about with or not we're going to get payback at say legislation incorporate what i think research tells us that increases the likelihood of getting benefits at scale i want to address these questions i address them actually in my written testimony in detail i'm going to talk about them kind of in the cliff's notes version today and then i'm happy to answer questions i'm really here to strongly support the education begins at home act because there is a strong and growing knowledge base of evaluation evidence that high quality voluntary early childhood home visits programs pay off on a variety of developing parent they develop parenting skills and knowledge and understanding of the key roles that parents play in kids learning and  development a lot of short term evidence to this effect and which i've summarized in gruesome detail and probably what many people to sleep with and i'm happy to talk about it believe me but i think you can make a strong evidence based case that investment in high quality programs pays off across an array of outcomes i think that's of particular interest to me is the fact that we're now getting along the two nil evidence that shows that these programs have the potential to increase parent involvement  elementary school meaning that parents are more likely to go to parent teacher conferences and initiate contact with their teachers about how the child is doing and as somebody who knows the parent involvement in school and learning a whole literature if you can create that kind of change parenting behavior that indoors through elementary and entice and beyond you've got a real recipe for long term positive outcomes for kids evidence also tells us a great deal about how to develop and implement high quality programs and this knowledge i would argue is critical for the success of investments at scale we know a great deal about what it takes to get high quality home visit programs and i want to talk about that in a minute so i think about it there's a bottom line potential great bottom line potential for home visits to return very important positive outcomes in the early years and well into elementary school and perhaps beyond these outcomes are things like increased school readiness and school success prevention of costly problems from maltreatment  to teenage substance abuse delinquency those kinds of problems we're beginning to have some evidence of those kinds of benefits with longer toodle research so i support eva because of the way finally the key features about what we know about what we need to produce and implement high quality programs maps directly onto key provisions of the legislation the research tells us that high quality hall visit programs are necessary but not sufficient they need to be part of a broader set of early childhood services including center based early care and education and they need to be connected to other supports and resources in the community the legislation provides for training curricular develop curriculum development and i think incredibly importantly for external evaluation and ongoing performance management it requires that states and programs report yearly on key indicators they can then use the information they get from their performance management to increase their performance so i think about what makes for high quality investments in public policy has strong research behind it research that helps us understand how to deliver quality programs and the capacity to track our performance and see if we're getting a return on investment thank you thank you julie we're going to turn to  being a military family started quite some time ago but we had fishley started our navy career in february of two thousand and seven it has changed our lives in many ways we were both raised in very small towns in southeast texas we moved to virginia beach and i was terrified i noticed immediately it was very different from life in texas with our extended family there to support us it has taken some time but i am so proud to call virginia my home now i have taken on the mentality that home is not where you are raised but indeed where the navy sends you then i join the parents as teachers program shortly after we arrived in virginia beach during our first couple visits with miss terry lynn williams who is our parent educator  aimless timid and shy but now when she comes through the door he is always excited to see her he knows this is a special playtime with mommy a mystery which is his name for her during each meeting then gets to experience a new activity and i get to learn a new parenting skill for me it is a perfect opportunity to get inside his tiny little mind and really understand the reasons he does some of the silly little things he does or what behavior is behind those what is behind those challenging behaviors for us as parents the past couple of visits have been very special for zion and myself because my husband was able to participate in the home visits we have really enjoyed our visits with miss terrilyn as a family when zayn was born he had a serious medical condition called p p h and also known as pulmonary hypertension in newborns the physicians told me that he could possibly suffer from neuro developmental issues after doing a little research i made a discovery that the number one side effect for children who survive the illness is sudden hearing loss and speech delay i was terrified and so worried that this could be the reason that vein wasn't talking as well as he should be the in home developmental screening that mysterio and conducted confirm that then had potential delays she calmly talked to me about my concerns and referred me to local resources that could do further testing on saying the testing showed me that he was approximately three months behind on his speech but they suggested that we wait a few months and see how he progress is on his own dane is now learning new words almost daily and if it weren't for mysterio and would not it's almost resources on my own carolyn was also very helpful to help us find some other resources in the community that helped us through some difficult financial times especially around the holidays she just seems to know how to get things done in our community and how to help us connect with community resources that i didn't know about i really wish i would have had this program when megan was ames age i think it could have taught me some wonderful parenting techniques right from the start rather than learning from trial and error it has been very beneficial for both me and my husband before he left for training he was the one who jacare most behavioral issues but when he left it was my job to do everything including discipline this was a very stressful time for me by the time we reunited eight months later he and i developed completely different approaches on parenting and discipline i asked ms williams about the problem we were having a explained to me some things we could do and she gave me some very helpful literature it really helped my husband and i to get on the same page and work together as a team megan and saying are wonderful children and we are so blessed to have them in our lives they deserve the best this world has to offer including my husband and i being the best parents is possible i feel in my heart parents and teachers is just what we were needing in our lives it helps me to be a better parent every day i think every military family could benefit from parents as teachers are blessed to have such a wonderful program at norfolk but there is a waiting list and so many families are able to participate i respectfully encourage the committee to support the education begins at home act which has provided me much help in my life and it would be great to get the funding for so many more families that could really benefit from the program i would like to say in closing a special thank you to miss tara lynn williams for making such an impact in our lives not only as a parent educator but as a friend thank you for your dedication as program and for all your encouraging words and your knowledge i feel so validated as a parent each time mysterio and visit when she leaves it's it's great for me ask bill so rewarded as a parent once again thank you for teaching me how to be my children's best and most important important teacher thank you you just said it once chairman miller and congressman davis and the other distinguished committee members thank you for inviting me here to provide testimony on my experience with home visitation services in chicago illinois i am a healthy families program manager and family support services coordinator for the service corp today i share with you the benefits of my experience about the characteristics of a successful home visitation program and the benefit of a federal investment and such services for our families and our young children the healthy families program edwyn feel moody health center presently serves forty one families in the near north community our intensive home visitation services are offered to new parents pregnant and parenting women and children up to age three since the inception of the program fourteen years ago our visitors have successfully completed fourteen thousand home visit the near north community where our healthy families program is located fourteen years ago has certainly changed the high rise buildings and row houses that make up the green a green housing development for many years are daily being demolished literally being torn down as we meet here today this infamous community better known for its crimes its gangs and blight has been a backdrop of the home visitation services of the healthy families program it has been among this unsafe environment that home visitors of our program have been more like a battle deal with the assessment workers and the home visitors have reported for duty armed only with their prenatal and their parenting curriculum developmental screenings and safety materials their smiles and their love for the community and their passion for their work this kind of commitment to work as forge trusting relationships with our participants that often last a long time after the children have graduated from our program at age three within this challenging environment we have been able to make great strides with our program participants leading to a better early childhood development outcomes for our children the near north healthy families program who healthy part of the healthy families illinois network and the large scale longitudinal evaluation that examines their programs impact on parents and children's outcome among the many benefits of participating in this program the evaluation found their parents involved in healthy family services demonstrated significantly greater improvement scales that foster their child's growth during the infants first six months of life and two years the family is receiving healthy family services compared to those receiving other usable services offered their children a wider array of materials to stimulate the cognitive development every day i see the tremendous impact that quality early childhood home visitation has on families in my community parents who lack parenting skills graduated from parenting parents who had little knowledge of their child's developmental stages anticipate visits from ho visitors so they can complete their child's age appropriate ages and stages developmental screening parent shout into action has changed from mere television watching with their children to into active play between parents and children at the children's museum parents who are among the many others who believed that the only time you took your tout to the doctor it was when your child was sick now see the benefit of preventive and regularly bringing their children to the doctor for will to our visits and immunizations two of our following the resources of our home visitor is a breastfeeding peer counselor was employed and is very very motivated she has two beautiful children today another put to supplant who is a mother a single mother of seven children is battling now relocation from cabrini green housing she has a mother who is ill and blind and not only the relocation and the housing being an issue for her working with her home visitor we know that she relocated to better housing from the work with a home visitor but pam now serves as our advisory council chairperson what i'd like to summarize is the benefits that we see coming from the education beginning at home the training and the supervision the community collaboration the evaluation all three are requirements of the bill in order to ensure quality of home visits are home visitors receive training the training increases the home visitors knowledge to develop their skills to meet the challenges that the program put to sleep in space and the home visitors and  g these outcomes with family the initial training that they give full court training is added to that ongoing trainings affected supervision is a part of it the healthy families program is a help is a program a home visitation program that is important to us and it is a part of a community health center which is the basis of our participants coming into the program it is urged today that this committee begin and move this alleged legislation toward an act meant thank you chairperson thank you danny davis and our executive director dr burney's meals thomas thank you very much for this but just patient in this thank you mr chairman ranking member mckeon congressman all myron members of this committee first let me thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today i hope to give you some anecdotal evidence about what results when there is not home visitation and when there is not early intervention in children's lives particularly at risk children in our communities as a prosecutor for twenty years there was such a need in allegheny county that i was able to start the child abuse unit there are four lawyers in our small county the do nothing but child abuse all day every day resulting from sexual abuse physical abuse neglect and i'm not here today to vilify parents certainly there are cases that come before me where people act with villainous intent but in many many of the cases that we see there are parents the just do not have the skills the resources of the knowledge necessary to care for their children appropriate and way that will help them thrive later in society and as individuals i'd like to give you a couple examples last month sentence two young women in their twenty's between the two of them they had seven children they had been lifelong friends since grade school those women decided that they need to blow off some steam and went out for a night on the town they left their seven children home alone the oldest of two of the children were two eight year old the eight year old began playing with matches they burned down the how they were unable to get their siblings out and five of them perished  sentencing was an emotional and gut wrenching event these mud love their children they did not wish to harm their children but nobody had taught them the dangers that might be fall leaving children of such a young age at home and the consequences were grave on that same street in this at risk neighborhood i currently have a case a mother again very young with a special needs child who is somewhat ill equipped to deal with the needs of her child has turned to drugs and alcohol in her home faulty wiring started a fire she was so intoxicated that she was unable to tell the police and firefighters that arrived at the scene how many children she had and her oldest child who was six perished in that fire again not a mother that had any ill intent towards her child any sort of malice or malicious will just ill equipped to deal with what was put before her and at home visiting and this bill education begins at home would greatly improve those skills that are needed for these parents there is not only a component with children that are harmed that type of abuse but one of the stories that will stay with me throughout my career and in fact till the end of my days a case that i did a number of young mothers from the inner city didn't know what to do with their children a gentleman came along with some means and some education and suggested to these mothers that he could watch their children and give them a better life and these mothers essential gave this man their children i prosecuted him for abusing eleven of the children that were in his home raging for the age of fourteen to the age of two and what stuck with me was a young man who was eleven years old told me miss laura i know he did bad things but he was the best dad i ever had he made me go to school he cared about my homework he took me to church he had me play baseball and that young man was then removed from this abusive home and put back to a home with a mother who still had no skills and two years ago i was testifying before a judge asking for leniency because that young man had now reached eighteen and was turning to a life of crime and selling drugs to help support he and his wife and his young infant child this program has such a positive outcome let me just give you some good examples of what can happen from this in houses where there has been in allegheny county we use the nurse family partnership in houses where there has been visitation sixty percent of the mothers and sixty percent of the children no longer are arrested because of that early intervention test scores have gone up forty three percent of the children have scored above the fiftieth percentile in cognitive ability making them better prepared for school better prepared for high school and hopefully onto a college in a productive societal ethics there are a hundred and three billion dollars spent each year on child abuse the cost benefit analysis shows that these programs for each dollar spent reduces that cost by making people productive members of society i have two data that i would ask the committee to accept  from the p c c d in pennsylvania on the economic returns of home visiting and one from fight crime and prevent investing kids on breaking the cycle of child abuse in summation i would like to encourage you at all possible to reduce my workload to give me more people to prosecute to give people more ability to care for their children so we can have a brighter future tomorrow and in the future thank you very much  program as a respiratory therapist to stop people from becoming sick and coming back into the hospital because the use of contaminated equipment is come a long way since pan and the nurse family partnership program that is utilized in los angeles county addresses a whole different problem and that's a problem of our future it is an evidence based program that has over thirty years of empirical research behind it and i'm sure you've all been made from oh you're with that when you look at over six hundred fifty thousand children in the nation being abused and neglected in this mystic dicko indicated some of them are truly heart wrenching and we have our share in los angeles county where over forty two thousand children are in protective services and this is truly unacceptable in called orphans of addiction and the pictures in that that article were truly what most people don't see a three year old being held by a drug addicted mom who was so loaded on heroin she couldn't even focus because of that a task force was called and decided that the nurse family partnership along with several other community based organizational home visiting programs need to be needed to be rolled out and in the year two thousand we received funding from the welfare reform dollars and we started a full county rollout of the nurse family partnership today we've heard over two thousand teenagers and some of these have truly been the most difficult cases i've ever seen in my thirty four year nursing career our youngest case is twelve years although she delivered at age twelve years old the end of people model is something that i never had in practicing as a public health nurse i never had the guidance i never had the instruction i never had the standardized protocols to follow many times i was at a loss what to do with these families that were so impacted by drugs and crime and gangs that there was really nothing that i could do that was significant in my book i'd never gotten this training in nursing the n e p model brings theory and science actual practice of which i'm a science freak so it really was something i advocated for in one thousand nine hundred six when i helped bring the program to los angeles its very basis based on the theories you all heard today the attachment theory the bonding the care of the whole family in the care of the child change theory brain development all of this is brought into this model the model has structured activities so the nurse knows it each and every visit what needs to be done and during those visits we talk to the families we talk to the father the families and we collect data so that we can bring that data back and look at what we're doing and see if we're doing an effective job at meeting the goals that we would like to accomplish it's really relationship based and there's not a program sitting in this room that is not relationship based because when you're talking about young at risk pregnant teenagers you're talking about establishing trust which they have none usually an establishing time some type of respect so that you can work together as a team to promote healthy families over sixty four visits the nurses take doing a two and a half year program with these families the trust builds up and interesting we don't even find out sometimes a problem in the family for the first six months it's not until that trust is developed we have nurse train the nurses receive over sixty hours of training that's minimal and just the model protocol and they carry twenty five clients which is three calls to improve the pregnancy outcome dr david all this is a model developer and he's currently with the director of the french and research center for family and child health at the university of colorado denver he really put in a huge data element at every visit we collect data that goes into the child information system and through that data we can provide excellent quality improvement quality insurance i can go over every single one of my staff look at their caseload look at their outcomes and through that i have to say that programs whatever the program if it's delivered poorly it will not consistently achieve good outcomes and i think that's what we have to keep in mind when we are funding some of these programs with the nurse family partnership nationwide and through three very very strict randomised control trials that dr old has performed in elmira new york and and throughout the nation we have decreased child abuse by forty eight percent fifty nine percent reduced in child of rest of that child when it reaches age fifteen we've reduced maternal arrest for drug use usually or other types of crime we've increased the involvement of fathers by forty six percent and as a thinly family demonstrates how valuable it is to have the father involved on the same target as the mother is involved in helping develop the family we get the children ready for school much quicker by reducing language delays by fifty percent and behavioral problems by sixty seven percent and again these are randomized control groups that are studies done by dr all of these are pretty validated percentages why then to your own districts and think about the cocktail being to you issues some emotional issues and i think it would be great for her to really get in there she has five other children too in which are adopted so and these are the ones who have the emotional issues that she really needs to get addressed and i think it would really help her children to do i was surprised how adamant from the san francisco bay area adamant law enforcement and the district attorneys worry about this program basically what they're saying we just can't keep up if we're going to have this continued growth and child related problems whether it's early child abuse or whether it's later is in schools or on the streets later on and we think that the evidence is compelling that this program will reduce our our caseload it does it it doesn't cure the common cold it doesn't fix every family but they were just adamant in their sense that where we see this taking place th ose law enforcement officials get a benefit of a reduced caseload and if you'd like to speak to that congressman i couldn't agree more there is in allegheny county only seventeen percent of eligible parents are being served the examples i gave you there could be six children that are still alive with just some basic skills there are we do hundreds of cases every year and that doesn't include the cases where we have tried in minor instances to put people in parenting classes and to attach them to the resources so a parent doesn't then get strapped with a criminal record and the children aren't permanent members of the system instead of a family we can't keep up we need more lawyers we need more staff just to do the cases that we have and as i tried to stress there are parents that are villains in the true sense but the vast majority of them are just people that didn't have role models that weren't given good examples you know i've been blessed parents of travel with me today i had a good role model hopefully i will be one for my child but many many people don't have that many people don't have the ability to wake up in the morning and see their parent doing something and being productive and actively working in the family and this model will keep people out of my system and especially if it reduces delinquency it will give children an opportunity to become productive men thank you my time is expired hopefully we'll have a second round as i like to go back to the smart in this weiss on the data component of this which i think is very important but right now let me recognize ing i was i was a sickly child and so i just stayed home and did all my schoolwork at home which is a great way to learn but also i'm interested because in my experience in local and state government as a county commissioner it's had charge of the juvenile detention facility and so forth and visiting there and seeing the kids working with the kids and there's received but also at state level dealing with products in the penal system of those children who grew up without proper home without proper training and up spending most of their life in prison  really we were fortunate in michigan particularly in my community quite a religious community and we had a stab a number of different homes for children for various denominations and that's not that the children were restricted to the nomination but the contributions came from those nominations and they did a fantastic job in our community but when i reached the state level realized that not every community had it the reason i mention this  make the funding that we don't have when you think of the numbers in l a alone there are seven thousand young girls teenagers are median age seventeen that fit the intake criteria for and if we started with thirty nine nurses in the year two thousand we're down to fifteen nurses now because of the funding constraints there is no funding available that fully fund this type of work what we're using now are funds that are meant for outreach to get people into services medicaid eligible those are living in poverty that is insufficient because what we do goes far beyond a simple outrage is outreach education support nurturing all of that is not covered but that's all part of the picture it's all part of the recipe so it's very difficult i think the role of federal government is to allow there to be funding that could fully support programs that meet the needs of those most at need especially i wish we had the dollars to do these programs for everybody because everybody really does need some support when they're a new parent but when we don't have those dollars i really believe we need to target those most at risk the young the pregnant for the first time and those who are living in poverty because by far they have the worst birth outcomes social outcomes in every other category that you can think of outcome so i would direct the dollars if i were in charge  and i know that there are i think over forty states now that have made a commitment to some kind of state capacity to provide home visitation i was in michigan in december with judy samuelson who runs your early childhood commission to talk with them about how to begin to create a state system of early home visitation that would be part of their effort to create a comprehensive early childhood system of services wisconsin has a state standing taskforce working on creating a system of state based early childhood services including early childhood visitation that group of people representing all kinds of different models from all kinds of places around the state came together a couple of years ago and said we need to develop a standard set of indicators and outcomes across our programs as part of our tracking and half of the building to support home visitation the state of wisconsin pennsylvania has done some very interesting sort of experimenting with a combination of the nurse family partnership and the maternal child home program as you heard from my partnership two and a half years third trimester of pregnancy and that year two with highly stressed families they've now paired that with the maternal child home program which focuses on literacy in school read enough and they do use some of their welfare reform dollars to do this and they're tracking it and we all know  the benefits of that kind of combination of home visitation services focused on from maternal and child difficulties child maltreatment as well as school readiness so i think we're seeing a lot of states making a commitment not just a little programs here and there but to building stay capacity to develop and fund them and increase the likelihood of return on investment from those dollars there's not a state i think that any of us in this room know of that isn't struggling to meet the need for more financial resources for home visitation that's what i think contribute is never going to be enough to pay for direct service for everybody who needs it but it pays for some key stanchions and some key capacity building and then some of the other resources perhaps can be provided you know by local and dollars and state dollars my time  sponsorship as well as his leadership and indicate that it's a real pleasure working with him and i appreciate what we've been able to come up with as i listened to the testimony of the witnesses  program think has been most helpful to you and your family i can only tease one  honestly to encourage my children daily to never let them lay their head on a pillow at night and let them know how proud i am of them from the smallest thing to the biggest  they do just to encourage them and validate them as my child a much you know how you did so good today and that is tommy that parents a few years has taught me that and also to validate my husband as parent him self to let him know hey you're  let me ask you have any of the cases that you've come into contact with been individuals that you would not necessarily describe as being disadvantaged no child abuse congressman is as this panel probably knows crosses all socioeconomic religious racial ethnic borders so i lots of examples of abuse in every aspect of society where this needed i see the greatest is in disadvantage families because they just don't have the resources they don't have the ability to go to a parenting class that they're paying for they don't have the ability to go to gym bery with their children or to a school based afterschool program or get them in the sports program at the y that's why i believe this bill is so important but i don't mean to say here in any way that child abuse is limited to underprivileged inner city families because it crosses all social and economic and racial and ethnic divides and some of the most terrific cases come from the wealthiest and and most of fluent neighborhoods nationwide so there are many different types of families and different categories and different groupings of individuals who can in fact benefit and do in fact benefit absolutely absolutely thank you miss london let me ask you because of the fact that you have been in the same location over an extended period of time and work with the newer north corporation do you see families as they continue to grow and develop where you can share that the relationship that the home visitors have with participants after they graduate is well beyond when the child reaches age three our parents have no problem after graduation with meaning us at the grocery store at church in the community wherever it is that they are just because the child has graduated at age three does not in the relationship there and so they still come back to the home visitor to the health center asking for advice and we are open to do that thank you very much and lastly dr weiss let me ask you there are individuals who believe that evidence based research s in your work and research have you seen the kind of information that would suggest the back of this program activity we're talking about  and i think we have thirty years of work including clinical trials either completed or underway by most of the major models that meet a high standard of evidence that suggests more positive outcomes across an array of things from parenting skills to school ready to reductions in child maltreatment what i find fascinating is capacity of the model and i think that people with and dancing this legislation i think ronald reagan once said if we want to do something for a nation's future we need to do something for nation's children because they are future and that's what this hearing in this legislation is about i want to thank all of our panelist for your testimony and for your work in your daily lives for the benefit of children and we're grateful to each and every one of you and this family i specially want to thank you for being here but especially for you and your husband nation blessed nation because of military families such as yours and i love what i do and i'm proud of what i do but what i do pales in comparison to what your husband and your family do to have our nation so thank you for your service i want to first just reference i know there's concern and when we hear five hundred million dollars sounds like you know we're not sounds like it is a lot of money but i think it's important emphasize in the mystic that i think in your testimony you talked about the family partnership study that shows five dollars saved for every dollar spent so here five hundred million spent a lot of money two and a half billion dollars saved a lot more money and it's something that i think is important we keep in perspective here that one of the challenges washington is when we talk about allocating money away we school were a factor of the cost there what would you highlight as the strongest aspect of the nurse family partnership program that you think is such a makes it such a good model with others to for us to look to help emulate across the country  what we've seen in allegheny county and one of the strongest ethics is holistic approach that looks at the whole family unit one of the best success stories is the woman who was drug addicted in her second trimester pregnancy she got up drugs her child was born healthy and now is a thriving toddler going to head start this woman has got a ged she is going to community college and is graduating may have already graduated this spring so she could go work in the medical records field so now both she and her child will be thriving members of society i think that holistic approach you're helping not only the child but you're helping the parents and if that parent has future children you're helping future children in that family so you're setting is strong and secure base for these people to move on i think it's extraordinarily important to have children school ready education ready and it's important for a number of ethics not only for educational purposes and for their future growth but also to be able to express people they come into contact they are in harm's way and what's happening to them so i think that model that sort of surrounds the whole family with the knowledge and a hope for a better future is what works best and i think this family kind of highlighted the portents of that holistic approach when you talk about you and your husband getting on the same page and that benefit to the family of being together and i've got a nine year old a twelve year old and my wife are always working and making sure we're on the same page together we're much better as parents in doing so in focusing on specifically the nurse family partnership  target first time mothers more impoverished individuals you want to maybe expand on why you as an organization focus on that category versus a broader approach to who participates sure yes we focus on that target population because that's the target population of this model was actually tested on and it was tested on the test on the target population because those who are young who are pregnant at the first time and who are living in poverty have the worst outcome of poor birth premature birth low birth weight birth they have poor socioeconomic development in the part of the mother as she goes on in her life maybe having multiple children after the first one so we follow the model we have fidelity to the model so that is the target population and that's actually why we do serve that when your testimony highlights when we talk about the benefits  not specifically dollar but quality of life for the participants in society general whether it be crime reduction child abuse reduction school readiness i mean your studies highlight why this investment is so important and we have been able to demonstrate that the local level too by the data we so there is no doubt about the fact that we do positively impact the families who are most at risk to load our hospitals and our postal system  who testified to the importance of practitioners and researchers sharing information to build a knowledge base into an informed public policy home visitation to what extent is that happening and what can congress do to ensure that those practices are widely known i think it's happening i think it's been happening for a long time the major model share information with each other about how to improve home visit services they individually and collectively learn from the research paresis teachers redid its  curriculum based on the neuroscience evidence i mentioned david olds has redone his curriculum so each of them shows an individual and a collective capacity to get and use information to improve how with the taishan so it gives us a strong base  both in terms of their willingness to do that and also the ways in which they're then feeding it into improve home visits services i'm very impressed with the provisions of the legislation particularly  around an independent assessment of the results of the legislation a national study with i think some very carefully laid out questions that that study would address and also with the set aside an expectation that each state will track performance of home visits services and my assumption is that with that they will learn what's working and working and celebrate and expand what is working and learn from what is and figure out how to improve it very much like the family partnership does and i know paris is teachers and a number of the other national models are building that capacity and in the state of michigan judy is helping to build that  and by that capacity i mean to get and use data to figure out what you're doing well what you need to do better and continue to improve the program and i think that's how you get a return on investment from from these kinds of services thank you move from one place to another is there some type of network where you can find out where a similar program exists that you could tap  into as far as like getting here and starting out in the program you want to know like if we move somewhere else and not having to find out if there is a similar program at the new base that you were able to utilize the previous i this is like this is our first year in the military and also i've never actually got to participate in another program like this but leaving virginia beach i would definitely seek out we have to make sure he has a good feeling about him and we have to make sure i was in lansing the state capitol to remember the state legislature and she was several miles away and i would kept emphasizing a good feeling one day i called so you probably hit the right balance i think my mike is often going to lean over i think it's really important to focus on a comprehensive system of early childhood services so this was i was very intrigued by your testimony where you indicate that evaluations  several of the major home visit models suggest that home with a patient in country unction with high quality early childhood education and or preschool is more likely to result in positive gains could you talk a little bit more about the importance of this continual continu um kind of services that i think let me tell you that the quickly the two studies a do it one of the study of early head start and that study done by helen rakes and her colleagues shows that when you combine home visiting early has  home visiting and center based care you get more positive results than either of those two interventions separately so that makes home visit as center based care as important as a recent study done by as bigler and colleagues of the parents of teachers program that shows parents as teachers parents were more likely to enroll their children in early childhood services and also more likely to be reading to their child at home and that combination of things measurably increased their readiness for kindergarten and some of the early school success so we've got several studies now that are pointing towards the importance of first of all not over promising what you can deliver with home visits services but then the value added of combining it with other services that are directly for the child and the continue on from birth through a longer period of time i know that there are quite a number of studies that show how important quality early education is to a child's success so your testimony that says combining they are their home visits with these kinds of high quality programs they really you get more bang for the buck basically so i think it's a very important point to make also i would imagine that there are home visitation programs out there that may not meet the kind of quality tests that we'd like these programs to have because i think one of the people testifying said that if it's not of a quality then you practically you know you're wasting your resources so what would be the indicators of a high quality home visitation program and how does this bill promote quality high quality curriculum getting and using data to track your performance are all critical and one of the interesting things about the legislation from my point of view is it sets aside and makes provision for all of those ind i think it's very important that the programs that are funded have clear cut goals and objectives that are measurable that their activities actually address what their goals are and outcomes that they valu are addressed in the goals and objectives so that it's just a complete package so that what they're doing matches what they're trying to do and then they assess to see if they've done it and so many of the programs that we have now are starting to do that  we're lucky that we're certainly partnership with this was practically already what was already done for us and we've got all the data systems we've got the computerized system we've got this theory that guides our the activities that are structured at each each visit the nurse gives we have structured guidelines of what we're supposed to do so we're not hopefully not that distracted by other things going on in the environment the gang shootings the drug in the back room and things like that so it's very important to have that structure and program has embedded in it the weekly supervision of our home visitors the project supervisor of each healthy families program meets with the home visitors to look at the quality of their home visits they are actually trained before they make their home their first home visit and we have a national accreditation body that looks at the quality of what it is that we do our programs are credentialed it's like a joint like a mini joint commission accreditation so quality is very very important what we do there is a state in the state of illinois a monitoring and tracking system that our home visitors put data and their regular quality improvement reviews of that data we look at it we analyze it and we apply it to the overall goals the program is based on twelve critical elements which are very very unique in terms of looking at the quality of what it is that we do we're not simply just making home visits and chatting with an individual we are actually educating the mom the mom is improving and parenting skills  that child is becoming ready for school because we know that when we are finished with the program is completed and the chalice three years old we work with them to move the parent and the child into the school in that particular community quality assurance is a very important part of the healthy families program thank you have a question for mystic because you have a lot of experience in the court system i take it family courts do the judges in your state have the discretion to require the parents to to involve themselves in home visitation programs mystic is going to give you a very quick answer yes yes yes and that's a good thing ok thank you opportunity to carry on the conversation of how important it is that our children get the best start in life and to talk about needing to do what ever we can do ensure that they're given every opportunity quality education health care support services for parents are such important programs they need to be expanded and every child and every parent needs to have access so that we can ensure every single one of these little kids that are born in the united states of america has an opportunity to be successful and i think today's hearing has confirmed all of that once again now a straw to you've had a like a vacation here we've not asked you a question so i think that that's what i need to be doing you say i have concerns with title take a particular training now first of all don't you think that signature because these are funded programs that signature is just proof to the funders that the offer has been made do you have any any examples of where that's been used and held against an individual or a family that chose not to be part of the training congresswoman are concern emergency room but this isn't the same thing this isn't medical provision this is signing on to say yes this has been offered to me or not to is that mandatory the training training is not mandatory all right well i'd like to ask the other members of the panel have you ever seen this offer used against one of a client or use for them the the healthy families program is a voluntary program on visitation program is voluntary educating parents to be informed individuals they make a choice as to whether they want to participate the whole tenor of the bill is that it is voluntary program and in my experience we have never used failure to participate in a voluntary program a basis to prosecute someone or in any way to get them involved in the against the bill in its entirety well congresswoman two issues about just section nine about these concerns the first one is many families could be pressured to take these classes no but they aren't ok so what could happen is also many families could end up without an education part of the family and there their children that have prepared those children and those adults to be good parents and good successful individuals that once they get into school so all of this is but ok the second and the second if congresswoman is actually following up with ms they said we're very grateful that families are not prosecuted but even anonymous tips sometimes from a nurse for example who says well why did the family not choose parenting classes could lead to this our concern is it's not clear in section nine if hospitals are required to offer these parenting classes or if it could lead to a situation where families are basically strongly pressured and ok well then i would suggest we can mr davis will look at the language to make sure that it's clear there's no question that it needs to be clear miss smart have you ever known of a nurse that's used such i don't know i've never known of a nurse to do that although we have had referrals from probation officers that strongly recommended their clients are on an f p when we get any indication at all that the client is is forced into it we do not enroll them all right unless they really want to do it but yeah it's voluntary all right thank you mr chairman mr chairman my question is for you ms dicta because i'm just reflecting that this sunday is father's day and as i review your testimony is struck me that many of the statistics you cited concerning program success relate to women namely young mothers in the program here's my question where the fathers and how do or actually does the program in your county incorporate in this is the fathers yes fathers are involved the nurse family partnership in allegheny county doesn't corporator fathers and in fact in the success story i gave you not only did the woman become educated and get clean she was also getting married so it's the whole package but if the fathers are willing and involved and they are encouraged to spin if they're willing to do so they are included in the program and can can anyone else on the on the panel speak to their experience when we say parental this seems to be such a heavy emphasis on the mothers what type of success we're having in incorporating fathers in this process i can speak to that we we do have great success when the father of the baby or the boyfriend to the mother who may not be the father is involved in the home environment where we have a problem is when the father's incarcerated and but the techniques that we use in the home even the simple thing as a father walking in the room when the nurse is there dad generally don't like to be involved in this but to include him when the father walks in the room starts talking enters will say oh look the baby just turned its head to look at you it already knows you and the father is astounded when the baby knows me that right there starts the bond and that starts our work and  then we see the dad slowly becoming more and more to hang out in the kitchen and listen then they'll come into the room but it's of it's a prague it's a of becoming involved and not just simply many fathers and i don't want to sit down and be that  pact one of the home visitors is in fact a father and he is able to engage the fathers more at each album is it and we encourage them even to accompany the moms to the health center for their prenatal visits and we have had fathers who have participated and graduated from our group parenting class wonderful mystica i wanted to ask you another question in that i'm from new york city and we recently  had a very tragic occurrence in our child where wealthiest a netware a three year old child died as a result of torture in the kia of his forth the care mother who was deemed unfit for custody of her own children in another state have you seen models of success in partnering with of any of the with the child perfect protective services and just what the cure agencies this seems to be some sort of hole there if someone who is becoming a parent doesn't have the parenting skills either and that's a huge part of our social network of babri get our communities i have a similar case pending now were family came from a different state their children were taken away they have new children here and those children have love lived in her if the conditions again the programs that we're talking about are voluntary so these people that are signing up for these foster care that have already had children removed are not going to voluntarily participate in a program like this and so this bill goes with voluntary program i think the issue that you raise takes us as sort of an a far reaching direction with sorrows of our social service problems that exist not only in new york and pennsylvania but i think in every state across the nation i'm even wondering whether they're even offered it i can address that in this market and i think for us in los angeles county when we did try to determine first of all how many girls who were under protective services got pregnant while they're receiving protective services we couldn't find that number nor can we find it statewide that data simply is not kept we do offer this program generically to every woman who fits our girl who fits into a criteria first time pregnant living in poverty and while we try to get them for their eighteenth week a pregnancy but the protective services system is when we really need to crack into it should be offered to every single child they are the most very very very at high risk of the girls who get pregnant in our county their outcomes are abysmal thank you very much mrs you discussions about this the hippy program is certainly was involved in california so i'm actually delighted to see how far this is common and that's great a few a few quick questions one of the self selecting process of parents choosing to be involved and i understand is is it always has been a voluntary program but how it is does that hamper in any way your ability to evaluate the extent to which the programs are  bringing something of of great value went to the family that perhaps they might not have received from in a desk in a different way one of the concerns we often have even with charter schools is that parents who are selecting that their child go to that school may have different tools available and to make that that a successful opportunity for that child could you comment briefly on that and are there some ways of dealing with how perhaps it i think i think the issue of selection bias is real because participation is voluntary so you're always going to have selection bias and i think that's true of any of the programs you're going to selection bias based on  involuntary having said that i think each of these programs in my knowledge goes to special efforts to do outreach to stress vulnerable families that could benefit from the service some of them target those families directly some of them do extra outreach to try to make sure they enroll the families that the evidence suggests can benefit a great deal from participation and in fact when one does  analyses of who participates and look specifically at the most high risk groups there's some evidence that suggests for example with early head start that it is the high risk groups that benefit the most which validates the effort to try to include perhaps the most highly stressed families so i think we can we can make claims that these benefit high risk families and i think we all so have to make sure that we're doing outreach to get them into the program but where and again and anybody who wants to to respond where is the greatest gap in terms of outreach providing trainers the personnel to participate in this program are we reaching individuals who in fact really can relate best to the families that they might be serving is there a gap in being able to identify outreach having those you know individuals come forward and want to participate and any man who participate as well i mean have we looked at that statistic we have  that's a difficult question actually to answer because we we have dealt with being nurses i get this a lot in los angeles where you're nurses how can you possibly know about the families that live in poverty so the cultural differences are are something that i've always brought up and i always have to bring up well nurses live somewhere and many of us were raised in poverty the gaps in los angeles county are such are mostly with the bilingual issues we we have so many languages mostly  spanish speaking and so we've made great efforts to make sure our staff is bilingual that i think and then an outreach outreaching through churches has been very beneficial schools and women infants and children program is one of our main resources for out do you see is my time is running out do you see that as an important part of the evaluation and should the bill be more specific in being able to assess the extent to which the program mirrors the population in the community that after late and we do keep that data in the doctor old and there's family partnership model so that we do know and it's very interesting because our population in an f p los angeles mirrors exactly able to afford being part of this program the healthy families program being a part of the social service arena always you hear about the salaries of the individuals  but as i said in testimony our workers have a passion and a commitment for the families that they work with and the families can really see that right here misspend lee who's   can't imagine a better national spokesperson for this sort of thing than you and your testimony about understanding the reasons that little zain does what he does and finding resources that you would not have found on your own and connecting with community learning parenting techniques approaches to discipline and working with both you and your husband in child rearing  it makes it so clear the value of of programs like this and you know we in new jersey have seen this i've seen it  family and children services children homes society they have a program with english language learners parents teachers in new jersey quite active and quite successful and if there's some way we can make this broader and more effective through legislation such as that of mr davis and mr platts i'm all for it i have a couple of of questions one is  becomes to formalize and appears to be coming from the state and is connected with with child protective services somehow in people's minds how do we guard against the the  participants putting up a defense saying you know this is an inspection service it's intrusive rather than as obviously i think it is terry land who  worked mistery land who worked with this family how do we build into this program and inviting aspect and i'm not sure whom i should ask this to anyone who has any any comment on that i think that's a good point and i would not and i don't think anyone even if we have concerns of the bill many of the things in this the services if it was in the example of let's say grants that were given to public private entities they could then offer these parenting classes maybe that would even get these classes into the hands of more people and still get very good education to parents teachers who could help parents and it would also do away with some of the concerns they have i know that well thank you let me i think maybe miss london would be the best answer the next question is how do we build into this not particularly stable they have to move a lot particularly if their military families have changing job and life situations are are there things that we've learned about how to build in a long enough contact to make to get the most benefit out of the program yes i would say we start with the trusting relationship that we build with the mom while she's pregnant so that's nine months and then we work with the children and the families until the child is three years old so that's three plus years and we continue working with them even beyond that if our families are relocated and when they move they can voluntarily continue to agree to participate and the home visit or we'll follow them wherever they move within the city of chicago limit appointed you know to have any in any way well we were very fortunate in our count i happen to go to be called for jury duty and then when i got out as that i was signed to  a murder case was going to take six weeks so i couldn't be chosen so i can stay in the court for six weeks but while i was there they had a presentation actually to all the jurors must have been a thousand where they is so high that the state can't handle it and so they're asking for volunteers that have to go through training to actually be assigned to a foster child to make sure that the flaws the child is getting proper treatment in foster care is a very unique program and we have almost a thousand volunteers that are in it but i believe we have more nearly twenty five times the average us rate of children in foster care in four cities in my county and we have are really unbelievable some of the problems that we have fourteen percent of the children are born low birth rate twenty five percent spend at least one night in the hospital in their first year twenty seven percent has asthma twenty one percent were overweight at age three sixty two percent were below the fifteen ms but i might ask you ms london about the i understand your testimony you speak of families that have been displaced in the caribbean a green public housing area we've had same problem  our which is our individual family support plan is whatever the parents i want us to work with them on that particular goal for a six month period and we updated and review it every six months so housing in that area is an intricate visitor work together with case managers and with other agencies to actually move and relocate the families and as i say it we're able if the family wants to continue in the program to actually continue home visits wherever it is that they move within the city of chicago and give the services office services to them our program is a part of a community health center so many of our participants are also patients of the health center and they continue to come into the health center even after the the challenge is aged out at age three and so we're able to continue into acting with them in terms of school enrollment immunizations will child visits or whatever it is that the parents need do you have section eight housing and your portfolio or not out of the house and part of what you know section eight says thirty percent of their income is spent for housing and the rest is paid by the federal government that would be more case management but the home visit is do they do work very closely with case managers ok well look my time's expired thank you very much chairman when i say thank you for calling this hearing and i want to express my support for the parental involvement in family involvement as we try to teach children the art of learning and i say that without a successful program in parental involvement and family involvement that i think that we are missing one of the most important components that a chinese family have chinese leaders have taught us who have visited china inquiring how is it that they can be so successful in having large percentages of their children graduating from high school and going on to college and beating the socks off of us when we compete with them in international scholastic competition so my questions  are going to be many and i asked you for short answers so that i can ask as many questions as i can during this short time they're giving me my first question is to miss london from illinois how does your program provide support training and supervision to ensure that the home visitors are effective in working with families who do not speak english presently our program is one hundred in my family can someone else answer my question those who are english limited families can speak i can certainly tell you that i am very interested in this because i come from a family of eleven and my mother didn't speak english so if we had anybody come visit she could speak to them but yeah i can speak a little bit to it in los angeles we have the top eleven languages young child who is pregnant i say a young child again seventeen is bilingual although maybe not good and the outcomes are similar and the same to the outcomes of those with the same cultural mix of the nurse to the client that also included we need to look at the african american population served by the latina nurse their outcomes were the same as any other person we served again it goes back to the relationship and sometimes there's a million things you can do without ever saying a word or what you say that we need to address the lack of communication wherever we are not able to have those visitors to the homes with a language that the parents can understand absolutely maybe taking college students who can speak the language whatever the language is my next question then goes to from harvard family research what does the research showed to be the co components of an effective home visit program that strengthens family literacy and helps parents support their children learning i think we talked a little bit about some of those key components as well trained staff it says  family partnership woman mentioned a program that aligns the goals what you do in the home and the measurement to make sure those are all consistent with the outcomes that you're trying to get a well trained  staff good supervision is critical and i think all of these models that i'm familiar with also stressed the importance of the parent working with a child around literacy development at the home what your research will confirm that  mothers who work with children at early ages one through three or four teaching letting the children listen to somebody reading to them to get them to learn to love books and reading  country they're spending families live in a climate of fear because of the current policy of indiscriminate immigration raids and local policies aimed at newcomers to feel unwelcome how do you build trust in the communities you sir i guess we build it by being there and showing over time that we can be trusted we don't report immigration we don't do anything we do report routinely is child abuse and we see it in the home but we've established a reputation in respect of a lot of our referrals as mentioned earlier come from the girls who are pregnant and their friends get pregnant they come to us that way i think it's very important to have multicultural nurses on board so that they can that we are supportive and again in nurses are one of the most respected professions and that helps to thank you thank you gentlemen  one in sales side of the program in that community it has a waiting list now most of the community to do it in fact have a waiting list and most of the parasite goes through it not most of them but many of them don't become people it's like being on the program all of the indicators that we have from means testing included in the legislation as part of any programs participating ours is a strength based program and the way that we bring in our families is to assess for particular potential for child abuse and neglect is what it is that we're looking for regardless of income level there is no income  teenage mothers in their second trimester but my response was in response to mr davis's question and that is that the any family regardless of economically could use this program it's just merely at risk you don't have to be impoverished to not have good parenting skills anybody can be afflicted with that problem thank you and  programs like missouri's parents teachers have evidence of benefits for everybody who participates regardless of income they've also been good as have other programs that serve a general population of providing more intensive and frequent visited home visits services to families that may need more help so there are a number of models of universal programs that then provide more intense and frequent services to more high needs families one of things i like about the legislation is that it leaves to the states and perhaps the local community to see about how they're going to use their resources having said that i think there's a research base case that says more highly stressed families need more intensive infrequent services within a universal model when people chose to go in that direction perhaps allowing that to be an option but not mandated for the state local participation and i think that's something i have said here that this is a federal program to help state and local efforts not to create a federal program but provide the funding for such a program also not a specific program that you are mandating in this year leaving a lot of choice within reason the states about the kinds of programs they're going to provide thank you mr straw to your testimony focused on section nine and the concerns there and a follow up my colleague in trying to get into that a little further with you is it safe to say that if in section nine if it was retained as far as trying to insure parents are made aware of this program the requirement was eliminated as far as a parent having to sign saying yes i participated or no i chose not to participate that requirement because it seems like that's what your focus was at having to sign something would make them feel pressured to participate so that signature requirement was eliminated would that go a long way towards eliminating your organizations concerns that would definitely help congressman if the materials were just in a hospital as something that's offered by the way something that would be very helpful we encourage you to take it that would take away a lot of our concerns our concern also however is that if the curriculum is going to be developed by the secretary of h s and there are no guidelines for how this curriculum is going to be developed what happens if it is open the i don't know politics being played with that as a different administration maybe one side doing this way one side doing the other way what is down the road ended participation and no consequences for not if i quickly i see my times out is just to emphasize with what the organization is in the in the findings of the legislation is i really see this is supportive  of parents who choose to homeschool because in the findings we reflect that the first and most important teacher for any child is a parent and that's exactly what homeschoolers believe in there and with the very large home school population in my district that are very engaged with their children and their education so we're trying to i think compliment what your organization is about a final comment just again this family and this really goes to  reflected on as well all the testimony has been exceptional and very helpful your testimony about the most important thing you've gotten out of your participation hit home i was telling my nine year old last night and every day with that hand on the chest when they're asleep they don't know i just said all is well i can go to sleep because my kids are sleeping your test about that lesson of stealing self esteem in our children is powerful statement and if you're not already doing show back home you are a great advocate for espousing the importance of families the parents participating in your program  virginia and i really thank you for being here today so th privacy in the whole question of possible course and we will review the language and take a look at that and try and make sure that there are no loopholes on let me let me thank you all if i just might take a couple minutes here one mr pipes has made the point i think it's very very important with respect to this legislation that we're trying to create a federal stream of funding not a federal program and i think that's important i feel a little bit like you all been running this startup company for a while and now now you're asking to go to scale and it's as we know and dealing with human services is the most difficult thing we can do and we don't have a great track record and on that point i am most intrigued by these programs as i've been involved with him and watch them over over several years that they've the attempts that have been made to maintain the integrity and to use the data in the information for program improvement and i would just ask you once again to look at this bill because i think it's absolutely critical so that we can say with confidence that we're we're investing in a program of success here a program of record and a program of sort of constant improvement and then i think that allows us to stay out of the way in that kind of so that you can continue to use the discretion the history and the background that you have of the program to make the choices and the decisions that you do that's a big test in our in the in our relationship here we hand out you know if we were fortunate to get half a billion dollars a lot of people start thinking we should start driving the horses here  clear that where these quality indicators are not in place we're just kidding ourselves and i think a couple of witnesses said if you don't do it right if they don't want to volunteer they don't want to participate it's just not going to work and i what would be my priority here with respect this legislation i think mr davis mr plaza done a great job of drafting this legislation but i want to know that if we're going to scale we can we could be back here five years from now in ten years now and see a program that has continued to improve without us creating a lot of regulations and hurdles for people to jump to just eat up the resources so there's that part of it and i just if we could call on you again to sort of scour the bill because you have very extensive experience with this i think we the bills been drafted with all of that in mind and but i just want to reiterate that point if i thank you too as dana meghan for coming today  to join us megan thank you very much for being here and bringing your brother we enjoyed you both so thank you and this is going to introduce mommy about her all the way down are you going to make a drive home come on my