Welcome to

Child advocates are fighting for funding to save programs that help young expecting mothers.

The Healthy Families Program helps single mothers learn good health habits and parenting techniques. The State Senate was proposing a 100 percent cut for the program, but restored funding last night. Secretary of the Department of Children and Families, George Sheldon, says the upfront prevention costs helps keep children out of the foster care system and juvenile detention centers.

“It’s a heck of a lot smarter to spend a little over 16-hundred dollars a year to prevent abuse or neglect or abandonment, than it is to spend the thousands of dollars on the children that are in the system,” said Sheldon.

The program cost about 16-hundred dollars per parent. The cost for the state to care for one abused or neglected child is more than 60-thousand dollars a year. The program was created in 1989 and has been successful in lowering child abuse and malnourishment in 98 percent of families served.