By Ed Oliver

Home visitation pilot programs were tried in the U.S. in the1960’s as part of the "War on Poverty." Experts say, however, that its use as an attempt to prevent child abuse is a fairly recent development. Dr. C. Henry Kempe is mainly responsible for that development. He subscribes to views that are startlingly similar to those in Cuba.

1968. The Battered Child is published, which is credited with launching the modern child abuse movement. It was co-authored by Dr. Kempe.

1975. Kempe gives what is known as the "Armstrong Lecture" before annual meeting of Ambulatory Pediatric Association.

• Kempe’s thesis was that parents cannot be trusted to raise their children properly. He said children’s rights require "limited intrusion into family privacy by society" to protect children from abuse and to ensure they receive proper health care.

• Kempe expressed boundless confidence in the state’s ability to care for children better than their parents. Since then, critics say that across the United States the number of families who have been damaged or destroyed by out-of-control "child protective services" continues to grow.

• "If the successful operation of an airplane requires routine supervision, it is all the more important that the takeoff and subsequent passage of a young family be similarly supervised to assure a safe arrival."

• His vision of "children’s rights" was to be enforced nationally through compulsory, universal home visitation, "similar to the concept of compulsory, universal schooling."

• He encouraged observation of new mothers and the asking of three questions to determine their potential for abusing children. "How does she look? What does she say? What does she do?"

• His "Child Abuse Early Warning Formula" later developed into the 15-point "Kempe Family Stress Checklist" used by home visitor programs to screen potential child abusers. "It has been found that health visitors are fully capable of determining which children are at risk," he said.

• He said home visiting was "an expected, tax-supported right of every family along with fire protection, police protection and clean water — societal services that we all deserve to have and from which no one can be easily excluded."

• Home visitors were to be used until the child reaches school age after which the visitor’s "duties" would be taken over by the school. Visitors would also "form a bridge between these families and the health care system."

• Society was to sanction "divorce" between children and parents as it does between married couples. "When that fails, legal termination of parental rights should be attempted."

• His frustration was expressed that society is not aggressive enough in dealing with child abuse. Kempe shared his favorable view of how totalitarian states deal with children and families. "Where the state is supreme, this particular problem is easily managed: in a dictatorship each child belongs to the state and you may not damage state property. The really first-rate attention paid to the health of all children in less-free societies makes you wonder whether one of our cherished democratic freedoms is the right to maim our own children."

• He advised a devious approach to implementing the home visiting program in states and localities where resistance is met. "There may be other approaches for its implementation. The state of Michigan, for example, has placed the charge on the Department of Education to assure that everyone is ‘educable.’ In theory this gives the department the right to provide screening procedures and comprehensive health care to make every child school-ready." (One of the objectives listed in the Healthy Families training manual is to ensure that children are school-ready.)

• The use of hospitals was advised as a launching base for home visiting programs.

• The universal supervision of homes was advocated to save a tiny percentage who may live in a "dungeon." " ‘A man’s home is his castle.’ But all too often the child is a prisoner in its dungeon. It is a dungeon of constant anger, dislike, aggression, or even hatred. We must guarantee that the child will be saved when there is danger to his health and life resulting from failure in parenting. In order to do this we must see the child, and the child must have access to us."

1991. "The federal government should begin planning for the sequential implementation of a universal voluntary neonatal home-visitation system," said The U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, citing Kempe’s work. The Chairman of the Board, Richard Krugman, was the successor to Dr. Kempe as director of the Kempe Children’s Center at the University of Colorado.

Hawaii’s "Healthy Start" program was instituted on a large scale. The program evolved "from the work of the Kempe program in Denver," according to their training manual.

• Hillary Clinton praises Hawaii’s Healthy Start program in her book, It Takes A Village. In it, she recommends making welfare and medical benefits contingent on accepting home visitors or "other forms of parent education." She says in the book, "I can’t say enough in support of home visits."

1992. The National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse launched a nationwide home visitation initiative called "Healthy Families America," modeled on the Hawaii program. Today there are over 300 Healthy Families local sites in 40 states under various names. The National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse later changed its name to "Prevent Child Abuse America."

The founder of this new organization was Donna J. Stone who said one of her two primary influences was Dr. C. Henry Kempe, "a pioneer in the child abuse field."

• Deborah Daro, former research director of the new organization told Congress the goal of Healthy Families "is to bring home visitation services to all new parents."

1998. The American Academy of Pediatrics cited Kempe’s Armstrong Lecture when it officially recommended that pediatricians should advocate at the local, state, and national levels for the funding of "quality home-visitation programs."
 

RETURN TO FRONT PAGE