How About Some Real Gifts for Mom?

Mothers everywhere are known for liberally dispensing their wisdom and common sense. We’d bet it was really somebody’s mother, for example, who decided an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. On this Mother’s Day, we’d like to suggest that while gifts and long-distance phone calls are lovely gestures, there are more substantial ways of showing all mothers that we care. Supporting legislation that benefits women and children, for example, is hardly flowery, but as most moms would say, it’s not what you say, it’s what you do that counts.

Measures that would help keep families together and another to keep them healthy are pending in the state Legislature. Two foster-care bills, sponsored by Assemblyman Bruce Bronzan (D-Fresno), would provide a type of “preventive medicine” service by treating underlying family problems before they kill the family unit. Almost 70,000 children statewide are in foster care at taxpayer expense of $1 billion. Foster-care children represent 1% of the population but one-fourth of the delinquents in the custody of the California Youth Authority.

While many children must be removed from their homes for protection, juvenile court judges agree that at least one-half of the children removed from their homes could remain with their families if preventive services were available.

Bronzan’s AB 1696 and 1697 would expand pilot projects that pay for in-home counseling services, as well as bring more federal dollars into the state for family preservation efforts, and establish a state fund for the same purposes.

SB 2038, sponsored by Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), and supported by key leaders in both parties, would provide a safety net for 170,000 California women and children who are threatened with cutoff from a crucial food-voucher program.

A shortfall in the federal Women, Infants and Children program, due largely to an unexpected leap in food costs, could deny poverty-level mothers and babies the nutrition they need to stay healthy. As is typical in health programs--and in life, mother would say--one dollar spent in prevention is worth several dollars of cure.

FOSTER CARE Number of California children in foster care. Fiscal years 1985: 37,000 1986: 40,300 1987: 47,300 1988: 55,700 1989: 67,100