The House Bill includes a section calling for home visits to poor pregnant families and poor families with children to provide cultural/relational and reproductive counseling. This provision is NOT about the delivery of medical services. It is about making the poor "self-sufficient" and less "dependent" on public assistance. In addition to providing for social/cultural interventions, the provision calls for INCREASING BIRTH INTERVALS among the poor -- READ: fertility control.
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This is absolutely stunning! I was a public health nurse in a rural area of Virginia for several years in the early 1990's. We did home visits for a variety of reasons including visits to pregnant women and new mothers. However, it was always for a medical problem or a follow-up to a medical problem. Nurses are not social workers and should not be "providing social, personal ad family interventions."! In fact, it is very important to keep these medical servies and social services separate. People using the public health services are already wary and rightfully so of "social interference" by state workers and in order to provide adequate health care, nurses need to stay above that suspicion. As an aside, contrary to the tone of the wording of this section of the bill, I never met a person, during home visits, clinics, TB screenings or any other duties as a public health nurse, who was purposefully taking advantage of public assistance. I was always trying to encourage people to participate in our services---Oh how things have changed!
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