Stop Washington Baby Act and Home Visitation Mandates

HB 1771 – SB 5683  The Washington Baby Act
HB 1351 -SB 5437  Expanding Early Childhood Education

The above bills promote a system of getting into homes of newborn babies.  Years ago this would mean a nurse came to your house to help you bathe your newborn and give you advice, essentially taking the place of your Mom helping out. Today the program has evolved to surveillance of your home.  They will observe and record into a data tracking system your child’s growth progress, emotions, and adherence to one-size-fits-all benchmarks.  In addition there will be a subjective analysis of the parent’s attitudes and behavior.  The interaction between the parents will be monitored for signs of domestic violence.  Parent and child will be subjectively evaluated for child abuse, neglect, stress, and depression.  Two surveys that might be used are the Protective Factors Survey to evaluate families and screen for abuse and the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) survey.

The new Department of Children Youth and Families (DCYF) is charged with the development and care of ALL children, including yours.  This agency and the previous agency, the Department of Early Learning (DEL), have successfully used regulations to turn privately owned business and churches into mini Federal Head Start/State Pre-schools.  They also offer classes to Grandma encouraging her to convert playtime to structured classes of teaching STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) to her toddler under the Family Friends and Neighbors programs.  Next will they be monitoring parents to “teach” to common core aligned benchmarks and evaluating if the parents are following the literacy guidelines for their newborn?

Currently the state already has a “voluntary” home visitation program.  WHY DO THEY NEED THIS LAW?  Yes the bill states the program “must be voluntary” but laws can change.  In 2005 SB 5621 was “voluntary certification” of preschools.  Today ALL preschools must comply with strict controls over how they operate, and they are setting aside tried and true lesson plans to teach to the required state standards.  The Early Achievers program started as a “voluntary” program but evolved into a mandatory requirement for all childcare providers who take any moneys from the state.  By July 31, 2019 this Early Achievers program will be required for ALL childcare providers even though they receive no state dollars.

Responses to their questionnaires and checklists will be recorded in the P20 data tracking system.  Once in your house they have the opportunity to report on all of your activities.  Do you have guns in the house?  Do you have an unlicensed caregiver watching your children – aka grandma?  Is your child eating a balanced diet or are you a vegetarian?  Do you have enough books representing diverse of races and genders?  Is that relative visiting from afar to see the newborn baby really a visitor or an undocumented immigrant?

The Department of Children Youth and Families wants to raise your child for you.  First they changed the behavior of the day care providers and now they want to enter your home.

Just say NO to government coming into our homes!  NO to Home Visitation laws!

CALL YOUR SENATOR and two REPRESENTATIVES to stop.  These bills will come to a full vote very soon.

Legislative Hotline:  1-800-562-6000

 

Information and graphics for this post were provided by:

Research Mom
edresearch@hotmail.com