Oklahoma child abuse prevention programs face future funding woes
Parent Promise made it through this year’s budget cuts without leaving the high-risk families it works with in the lurch.
Executive Director Sherry Fair said she isn’t sure it can pull off the same trick for another year, though.
Oklahoma City-based Parent Promise and eight other organizations had $2 million in state contracts to perform home visits with families at a higher-than-average risk of child abuse or neglect. The Oklahoma State Department of Health cut the contracts in October to deal with a budget shortfall caused by years of overspending.
Private funders helped Parent Promise get through this year, but organizations in rural areas haven’t been so fortunate, Fair said.
“There were a handful of us who would move forward because we were in the more metropolitan areas and had more access to private funds,” she said. “It seems like we should be able to find $2 million so we can continue our work.”
Tony Sellars, spokesman for the state Health Department, said the department still is assessing its financial situation, including what grants it might be able to make in the fiscal year starting in July.
Oklahoma has one of the highest rates of kids who experienced adverse childhood experiences, such as abuse, neglect, or various types of family dysfunction. About 27 percent of Oklahoma kids had two or more adverse childhood experiences, and roughly the same
number had one, according to the 2016 National Survey of Children’s Health. Children who have had more adverse experiences are more likely to have poor health as adults, to spend time in prison, or to become teen parents.
Home visitors teach parents about child development and how to interact with children in a positive way, so parents don’t abuse their children while attempting to discipline them. In an ideal system, they would be just one part of the prevention system, and families would have access to more complex services like mental health and addiction treatment, as well as economic support, said David Bard, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Oklahoma Child Study Center. Unfortunately, those other services aren’t available in many parts of Oklahoma, and those areas would be left with almost no prevention framework if home visiting programs close, he said.
“You can’t put all of your prevention eggs in one basket,” he said, though home visitors are a “critical piece of this puzzle.”
Oklahoma began working on child abuse prevention in the 1980s, which was earlier than many states, said Barbara Bonner, director of the OU Center on Child Abuse and Neglect. The center studies programs to prevent child maltreatment and partners with state agencies to expand use of methods that work.
About 15 years ago, the state had 29 child abuse prevention programs, but two-thirds closed up shop as state support decreased.
“We’ve seen it peak and not decline, but peak and almost crash,” she said.
Without home visiting or another prevention program, vulnerable children might not be identified until they started school, Bard said. Much of the brain’s development happens before age 5, so by that point children may be saddled with patterns that make it harder for them to control their behavior and learn. It isn’t impossible to reduce the effects of trauma later, but it’s significantly harder than preventing it in the first place, he said.
“You’d better hope that you have a very patient, understanding teacher” in those cases, he said.
Parent Promise has worked with about 800 families since 2010, and 95 percent of those families didn’t have a substantiated case of abuse or neglect, Fair said. Over time, the program saves the state money by decreasing the need for placements in foster care, and later juvenile detention or prison, she said.
“I like to say we’re a diversion program,” she said. “All children deserve a happy childhood and it’s heartbreaking that some of them don’t get that happy childhood.”