Family Home Visits : Nanny State, here we come.

Sandy has a good post here about government nanny-state-ism.
Personally, I really don't think the government is going to be able to make it work. Social workers have more on their plates than they can handle now, and are totally understaffed and underpaid/underfunded. The government can mandate all it wants, but coming up with the funding for this is going to be next to impossible. How do I know this? Been there done that 32 years ago, when I was on welfare and my son was a baby. Welfare caseworkers used to have to make home visits twice a year to every person in their caseload who got Aid to Families with Dependent Children (that's what it was called in Illinois, anyway). I was on AFDC for about 4 years (and got food stamps and medical assistance after I started working and didn't qualify for AFDC anymore). My caseworker made two home visits in 1977, and then the state quit mandating home visits because caseworkers didn't have time to do home visits AND their paperwork AND interview prospective clients in the office.
Supposedly, those home visits were to prevent fraud and show that you actually lived where you said you did, and that only the number of people who were supposed to be living there were actually living there. Most home visits were unscheduled and you never knew when the caseworker was going to show up (you would know the month, but the specific day and time, nope, no way, not going to let you know that, you might get rid of your roommate/spouse/whatever).
Now if states can't afford to have welfare caseworkers do home visits anymore (and haven't been able to afford it for 30+ years), and child protective service caseworkers have more work to do than they have time for, how in the hell does Congress (or anyone else in government) think they can afford to fund something like this? Especially since they are taking funds away from social service programs. Does this mean they are going to give additional funding for health care for those poor people that they think are too fat? How about more funding for schools so kids can actually learn to read and write and spell and do math and science? Those are the things we need, not someone to tell us how to raise our kids and how to feed them. For fuck's sake, how long have we been raising kids without government nannyism? And the majority of kids have turned out pretty damned decent without the government's interference.