Panel Proposes Home-Visiting Program To Curb Child Abuse

By Deborah L. Cohen

To stem the maltreatment of growing numbers of children, an advisory panel has urged the federal government to develop a national program of home visits by health workers and aides to help educate and offer support to new parents.

The U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse, established by the Congress in 1988, called for a home-visitation program as part of a "new, national, comprehensive, child-centered, family-focused, and neighborhood-based child-protection system."

In its second annual report to the Congress, released at a meeting in Denver this month, the panel described state and county child-protection agencies as "overwhelmed and on...