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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
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MEDIA CONTACT: Ben Turner House Democratic Communications Office Phone: 717-787-7895 Fax: 717-783-6839 |
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Mundy’s new law will help more than 200 Luzerne County families
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Gov. Ed Rendell recently held a ceremonial
bill signing for Rep. Phyllis Mundy’s newly enacted “Ounce
of Prevention” legislation, which will help the Nurse-Family
Partnership of Luzerne County to preserve valued funding to
serve more than 200 local families. Rep. Mundy is at front
left. Kathleen Krivenko, program manager of the Nurse-Family
Partnership, is at far left in the back row.
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KINGSTON, May 18 – A new law that state Rep. Phyllis Mundy sponsored will help a local agency to preserve valued funding to serve more than 200 families in Luzerne County.
Mundy’s “Ounce of Prevention” legislation, which the governor signed into law last month, is designed to strengthen thousands of families in Pennsylvania and help at-risk children in those families emerge from their formative years healthier and better prepared for school and life.
Mundy’s legislation, Act 23 of 2006, establishes a state Ounce of Prevention grant program to fund community-based efforts to provide intensive home visits for at-risk families with young children. The home visits promote parenting skills, child health and safety, school readiness and family self-sufficiency.
Kathleen Krivenko, program manager of the Nurse-Family Partnership of Luzerne County, said, “Although the Nurse-Family Partnership has nearly 30 years of ongoing, longitudinal, randomized trials demonstrating consistent and dramatic benefits on the lives of young families, we have always struggled to convince legislators and communities that prevention is where we need to invest our dollars in order to save money in the future.
“This new bill is a good indication that people are beginning to see the real value of home visitation programs like ours, and we are finally getting the necessary attention from our state’s legislators. Representative Phyllis Mundy has worked eight long years making this bill come to fulfillment. We applaud her determination and vigilance in caring for families in Luzerne County and throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania.
“We expect this new bill to help us to maintain funding to serve over 200 families in Luzerne County – and we’re hopeful we’ll be well positioned in the future to serve even more.
“Our Nurse-Family Partnership program and others throughout the state are excited and optimistic about the implications of this latest bill, and we are thankful for the opportunity to better serve young families in our communities.”
Mundy said, “The common-sense idea behind this legislation is that an ounce of prevention truly is worth a pound of cure. Studies have shown that for every $1 we invest in early childhood development, we can save up to $7 later on. This investment helps us to avoid much more expensive costs in areas such as special education, health care, domestic abuse, drug abuse, crime and prisons. I appreciate the good work that the Nurse-Family Partnership program and many other organizations do throughout the state.”
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