Date: 2010-12-08
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I rise in strong support of S. 3817. the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Reauthorization Act of 2010. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Reauthorization Act is the only Federal legislation exclusively dedicated to preventing. assessing. identifying. and treating the effects of child abuse and neglect. This reauthorization includes a number of important reforms for more use of the best practices in the child welfare system. First. the bill focuses on the vulnerable populations. unaccompanied homeless children. as well as children with disabilities. Second. the bill improves and strengthens data collection and analysis to improve the State coordination of overall services to help prevent child abuse. Third. we improve the training of people who work with abused or neglected children to ensure that best practices are followed. that families remain whole. when possible. and that children are removed from dangerous situations when needed. This Democratic Congress has taken swift action in the past to address issues of the safety of our children in school. in child care and in treatment facilities. It is clear we need to do more to help our children in their homes. This bill will also address domestic violence by reauthorizing the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act. I want to thank the gentlewoman who just preceded me in the well. Congresswoman GWEN MOORE. for her leadership and efforts to highlight this important issue. It is a sad reality that. during economic downturns. domestic violence occurrences happen more frequently. We know that nearly one in four women is abused by a partner in her adult life. that three women are killed by their partners every day in this country. and that 15.5 million children are exposed to domestic violence each year. We know that women between the ages of 16 and 24 are at the greatest risk of being victims of domestic violence. That is why this legislation is so important and why we allow dating violence victims to be recognized as recipients of services under this legislation. It is very important in this legislation to protect women from this violence. It was over 30 years ago when I visited the first Shelter for Victims of Domestic Violence in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was started by women in order to help protect women and to try to get them services. Later. there came to this Congress a first appropriation for services to sheltersprotecting women from domestic violence situations and trying to show them how. if necessary. they would be able to live independently or that shelters would be able to provide counseling for their abusers and would see whether or not children could be protected. That was a long time ago. We have come a long way in this country. This legislation is incredibly important. and we must continue this effort of protecting these most vulnerable partners who are abused in their relationships on an everyday basis in this countrystill in numbers far too great for us to consider that this problem has been solved. I want to thank Congressmen KLINE. GUTHRIE. PLATTS. and others for their help on this legislation. and I want to thank CAROLYN MCCARTHY. the subcommittee chair. for all of her work and all of her concern that she has expressed and devoted her time to with respect to both the issues of child abuse and of domestic violence. issues that resulted in this legislation. I hope. with these quick few changes. we will be able to send this back to the Senate and that they will support it. I want to thank the gentleman from the Northern Mariana Islands for managing this very important piece of legislation on behalf of the committee.