More confusion over legislation for young people in Pierce County
There continues to be misunderstanding of what we’re trying to achieve with the early childhood resolution and P-25 Commission. Some of it political, which is too bad. But there also seems to be a fair amount of honest miscommunication.
I’m going to address a resolution that we just received from the Pierce County Republican Party because it gets to the heart of the problem, but for a primer on the two bills, you can go here.
Quoting from PCRP’s resolution:
Resolved, That no government should be granted jurisdiction or responsibilities to oversee children against parental wishes unless granted under a court order and the parent has the right to refuse access into home, questionnaires, and survey without consequences, and
There was a statement made at the last Council meeting that “the government isn’t a good parent.” I couldn’t agree more. In fact, the whole purpose of the Help Me Grow pilot is to reduce the number of dependency cases, keeping more families together and improving outcomes for babies. As I wrote here, the point of offering voluntary home visits is that not every family has the support they need. Even when people have family able to help, babies don’t come with instruction manuals.
If parents ask for support, they would be matched with trained nurses from Pierce County to learn the skills to be successful in their new role. They work with families in the home to help parents recognize and promote healthy growth and development. They develop trusted relationships with the families they work with, reinforcing positive parenting skills and connecting them to critical community resources such as child care, medical care, nutritional support, housing, and job training.
HMG is not an effort to replace parents. It’s to support them and improve outcomes for children.
One irony about the opposition from the Pierce County GOP is that you could say it’s a Republican idea. In 2008, the first federal funding for community-based home visiting programs was included under President George W. Bush. It was championed by Republican Senator Kit Bond.
Regardless, neither of these bills sets up a program, or even specifically HMG which is a contract between the State and First 5 FUNdamentals. The resolution simply states that the Council prioritizes early childhood policies. Similar resolutions are being passed on a bipartisan basis by counties around the country.
The P-25 bill sets up an advisory board to the Executive and Council similar to the couple dozen other advisory boards we have on everything from developmental disabilities and aging, to airports and solid waste. They have no authority and establish no programs. They provide advice. Full stop.
Resolved, That the Washington State Legislature enact legislation that allows parents to voluntarily agree to permanent electronic data retention systems, the collection of nonacademic and personal data on their children, mandatory use of technology such as iPads that enter data on the family, or to opt out of nonacademic surveys, and personal data on their children, mandatory use of technology such as iPads that enter data on the family and programs that collect data on emotions, behaviors, thoughts, and beliefs; and
Though they say this is to the Legislature, I’m guessing it was sent to us for a reason and much of the rhetoric has been about data collection.
I get it and completely understand the concern. It seems like in this age of technology and devices spying on us in our homes, the word data has become a little scary — particularly when it comes to kids.
However, in this case, the data we’re talking about is to measure the efficacy of programs. Performance metrics about the program, not the family or child. This goes to our public health obligations. When we talk about population health we’re talking about the aggregate, not individual cases like a doctor. It’s a critical distinction.
Frankly, any policymaker who isn’t making decision informed by data is derelict in their duty. I don’t care what your hunch tells you. If a program is going to compete for scarce resources, we need to guarantee the rigor of its evaluation.
Resolved, That the Washington State Legislature enact legislation to allow parents full access to the records of their child and have the ability to correct information; all users of the data must be fully disclosed to the parents as well as the purpose for the collection of the data.
I’m unclear what this is getting at or what the purpose would be. What we want to know is the efficacy of the program. In fact, I don’t understand why we’d allow any program in any department to exist without performance measurements. That would seem like a core conservative principle. This isn’t about grading families. It about accountability for the program.
Locally, we’ve expressed a desire to see a reduced number of dependency cases and low birth weight babies. If we can’t achieve results on those metrics, that should tell us something.
I am happy to work on addressing concerns and will be supporting an amendment offered by the chair to make it clearer what we’re trying to do. At the same time, I’m not going to let politics get in the way of improving the lives of children in Pierce County.
