The proposed Obama government healthcare bill has a government snitch network built into it, allowing social workers to gain access to your home under the pretext of checking on your new baby, or soon-to-be-born baby. It will result in many many more children being taken from families by state Child Protective Services agencies.

This is the fulfillment of a long-held dream by child protection agencies to gain access to homes, without first getting a report of abuse or neglect, as currently required by law. Mandated visits to homes by government agents has been a favorite cause of Hillary Clinton, and of the radical bureaucrats running the U.S. Administration of Children and Families.

This "home invasion" program is found on page 838 of the lengthy bill, in Section 1904, and it is called the "Home visitation programs for families with young children and families expecting children." The pretext on which the state agents would enter the home would be to "to improve the well-being, health, and development of children by enabling the establishment and expansion of high quality programs providing voluntary home visitation for families with young children and families expecting children." It sounds pretty innocuous, but based on my 15 years of fighting these bureaucrats in court on behalf of innocent families, it can be predicted that the way it will work in real life will be much more sinister.

Visits from the bureaucrats are voluntary in theory. (However, so are income taxes.) Here is how it will work: after your first appointment with your OB/GYN to confirm a pregnancy, the doctor will be required to report it to the leviathan healthcare bureaucracy. If you somehow fall through the cracks during the pregnancy, the birth hospital will do the honors of reporting you to the state. Then, chirpy social workers will show up at your house one day, and pressure you to allow them to come "voluntarily" into your house. These people are so-called "mandated reporters," who must report any abuse or neglect or potentially face fines and jail.

Certain populations will be targeted for this "help," and this should raise even more concern. Here is what the bill says: "The State shall identify and prioritize serving communities that are in high need of such services, especially communities with a high proportion of low-income families or a high incidence of child maltreatment." Translated, this means that poor and racial minority communities will be targeted, since they are more vulnerable and they cannot as readily access legal muscle to repel the invaders.

Once into your home, they will look around and find something, anything, to call "abuse" or "neglect." Their jobs depend on it, and you can be sure that the managers will set quotas, which will never be acknowledged. Then, they will open a case with a child protective services agency, and give you "services," whether you like it or not. In cases that they judge to be more serious, they will likely ask their legal department to bring a court case and possibly remove the children.

This is a backdoor means of obtaining agreement to go around the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and similar provisions in most state constitutions that prohibit entry into a home without a search warrant. If you agree, then you have waived your right to require a search warrant, which can only be authorized by a magistrate or judge on probable cause that a crime has or is being committed.

This part of the Obama healthcare bill is terrifying, and the numbers of children taken from families, as well as those who will have to endure weekly or monthly visits from a social worker, will increase manyfold. This conclusion is not speculative, as it is the whole reason for mandating these visits to homes in the first place. If they did not expect to kidnap more children and to open many more administrative cases, the provision would not have been there.

This is the first installment in a series looking at various fine-print provisions of the proposed Obama healthcare bill that deprive citizens of rights, or are of particular concern owing to their likely intrusion on personal privacy or family autonomy.  Check back frequently for further parts in this series, where we will isolate and analyze the scariest parts of the 1017 page Obama healthcare bill.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (10)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Adam said:

... There's a simple explanation for this expanded role for social workers: hiring more social workers. I'm not too up on American politics, but I'm suspecting that the social workers' union gave B.O. quite the political donations. Certainly, this is what happened in Canada, with the Gun Registry/Firearms Act (C-6, introduced by the Liberals, under Jean 'Adscam' Chrétien. While the Liberals got their dough from IT contractors CGI and Honeywell (as Obama did from Microsoft), the Bloc Québécois and NDP supported it, because it was a make-work programme for unionised civil servants. Lots of make-work union-supported projects happen--as many as there are corporate porkbarrels. If you look at your local (municipality, county) government, you'll see bylaw officers, pet registries, building and business permit offices, and many other black holes for labour. Not only are these deadbeats a threat to civil liberties (social workers, permit offices), but they absorb enormous pools of labour. Liquidate these make-work departments and you've solved the 'labour shortage' that mass immigration is supposedly needed to fill...along with cutting MASSIVE amounts of taxation.

August 12, 2009

Margaret said:

social news I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often. Margaret http://grantfoundation.net

August 21, 2009 | url

Home visitation, Lowly rated comment [Show]

Gregory A. Hession J.D. said:

Author's Reply to "Home Visitation" I have practiced for 15 years in juvenile and family courts, where I see the excesses of social workers. No one wants or advocates child abuse. The question becomes, what is the effective means to deal with it. State child protective services agencies like California CPS have proven to be utterly incompetent at 1) Having any affect at stopping child abuse - it continues apace; 2) Sorting the actual abusers from those whose acts are inconsequential, so that innocent children are traumatized needlessly; 3) Reuniting families, as required by its legal mandate; and 4) Rehabbing actual abusers. The present system does not work. It is the outworking of political hysteria, it is mismanaged, it is populated by people who have not worked out their own issues and so project their own fears on the families they work with, and it has no accountibility when it messes up and harms children. I have yet to meet ONE family in all these years, who has benefited from CPS intervention. Other than all that, it's a great system.

August 24, 2009 | url

His said:

Only one way... When the heart of a nation falls away from the God who granted it its inalienable rights, nothing but chaos ensues. This is what we are getting as a nation now. Common sense has flown out he window and slavery comes next.

August 26, 2009

CC said:

New Zealand In New Zealand (government run health care) we have these home visits...done by the midwives (who nearly all pregnant women use). They come for 6 weeks and then hand you off to the next government group, who are volunteer nurses, who do all the well check-ups over the next few years after the home visits are over. My midwives didn't tell me when they were coming, they would just show up sometime at the beginning of each week. It feels quite intrusive having these people come into your home and I ended up declining the nurse visits. Although they were very nice, I always felt like I was under a microscope. Anyway, I just wanted to add some personal experience. My husband and children are American which is why I have a lot of interest in America's future.

August 27, 2009

Linda said:

... Says Wendy: "Or, do we believe that individual rights belong only to adults, and as such, those adults have the right to neglect, abuse, and, often, kill, their children?" Parents have no right to kill, neglect or abuse their children. But let me ask you this, Wendy: Why would I believe that the same government which holds that children have no right to live at all before they are born, now somehow cares about what happens to them after they are born? Let me repeat the question. Why would I believe that the SAME government which HOLDS that children have NO RIGHT to live at all BEFORE they are BORN, now SOMEHOW CARES about what happens to them AFTER they are born? Answer: I don't! The government that pays abortion providers to murder the child in its pre-natal state doesn't worry about it later, either. Have you not read the multitude of horror stories of foster home abuse, neglect, murder, torture, rape and the disappearing of children?? As hard as it is to even contemplate, I can't see how it helps a child to be thrown out of the frying pan and into the fire. Now, I have no doubt that there are many good foster families who deserve a special place in heaven, but would you want that dice rolled for your own babies? By the way, I am intimately familiar with childhood abuse. So just think about, huh? Linda

September 04, 2009

Mare said:

... Well said Linda!!! I wish every reader of this blog would read and re-read your statements. It's a tragedy what the CPS has wrought on the lives of so many innocent families.....all in the name of 'protecting' the child. What hypocrites indeed they are! I too abhor child abuse and child neglect and think parents who are guilty of such need to be jailed. But to move children around like pawns in a game of social roulette is a disgrace that needs to be stopped. However as with most (and I emphasize 'most')social workers, they tend to be criminally naive, therefore presenting a danger to families who are exposed to them. Too bad, as you pointed out, that as much concern is not given to the unborn's right to live!

September 04, 2009

JWS said:

... Having been a victim of and having defended those accused by the "child nazis" , this lawyer can attest to the fact that the communization of families has led to the abuse we see today: A child raised by an undisciplined parent learns no discipline. I had an "extended" family of grandparents, aunts and uncles all, who would not fail to whip my ass if I transgressed the rules of common civil behavior expected; I have no quarter with the state telling people how to raise their children, religiously or otherwise. On the other hand, if one can demonstrate a criminal act against a child (rape, assault,malicious or indifferent neglect), then I am all in favor of prosecuting those people and giving those children a better opportunity. Once the government becomes the "Nanny" of all, none of our grandchildren will grow up free, because they will never have learned how to take care of themselves. Even with the "mandated reporters" and several thousand dollars in legal bills, this lawyer and his wife managed to raise three children who know who the hell they are, and are contributors to our future. NO social workers in my bunch. My youngest got her indoctrination to the sorry state of world (not just amerikan) morality in 1998, at age 7. She watched Bill Clinton deny he'd "ever had sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky", and hollered at the TV that, "OH, YES YOU DID". Here's a child that didn't need to nor should have had to be exposed to that salaciousnus at that tender age. But they are. It's poison. It's designed. If you don't raise your children to avoid this kind of thing YOU are part of the problem. Want Mr. O to do it for you? Go ahead and just give him your children. That's what he wants.

September 04, 2009

Mary said:

CPS's abuse I so agree with you. We had a "special needs" child who was found to have an eye hemorrhage at age 4 months. The social worker (sw) told the judge: "The opthalmologist told the pediatrician, who told me, that the hemorrhage was caused by shaking," so they took her away. Our lawyer got the ophtho's report (we were not allowed to even look at it), and it clearly said that her eye hemorrhage was not due to shaking but was caused by her anemia (which was later found to be caused by a genetic condition). We got her back and our case was "unfounded", but then Navy Family Advocacy insisted on "following" us for a year and making us see a shrink (why, since we were "unfounded"? They refused to tell us). The stress caused damage to our family. The system assumes certain things: 1. The sw can tell the difference between abuse and nonabuse; 2. Unnecessary intervention never does harm. Both are lies, but they have to keep telling themselves these lies in order to sleep at night.

September 06, 2009