SALEM, Oregon (PNN) - April 23, 2019 - Oregon Governor Kate Brown has submitted her 2-year budget proposal to the Oregon state legislature, and it includes several health initiatives aimed at children’s behavioral (mental) health under the oversight of the Oregon Health Authority and Oregon’s Coordinated Care Organizations, a uniquely Oregon approach to blending a wide array of health services under one umbrella.
One of the key pieces of Governor Brown’s legislation is: the beginning investment in a six-year program to create universal home visits for new parents. The Beaverton Valley Times interviewed Patrick Allen, director of the Oregon Health Authority, who reportedly expressed excitement at the prospect of requiring home visits of all new parents, including adoptive parents:
When the program is complete, every new parent - this includes adoptions - would receive a series of two or three visits by someone like a nurse or other health care practitioner.
The visits could include basic health screenings for babies; hooking parents up with primary care physicians; linking them to other services; and coordinating myriad childhood immunizations that the State says babies need.
Allen made it clear that they were targeting all children, not just troubled families. “This isn’t something for people in trouble. This is stuff (the State believes) all (children) need.” said Allen.
The State of Oregon sees about 40,000 births per year, and the universal home visit program has apparently already been piloted in Lincoln County. What about the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which the Cornell Law School states “originally enforced the notion that each man’s home is his castle,” and says,
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Is this proposed bill for universal home visits possibly just another way for the State to collect funds, and to potentially remove children from their homes and place them into the lucrative foster care and adoption system?
We have already documented how the foster care system is not primarily about protecting children, but is merely a State-funded child trafficking system. There is already a federally funded home visit program funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration.
The federal program is stated to be “voluntary,” but Oregon seems to want to take it a step further and make government home visits mandatory.
Apparently $400 million has already been allocated to states to fund home visits, and states need to implement programs to receive those funds.