Families and kids need your help in stopping this bad bill and your opposition to it must be made known by Wednesday night 04/03/2024 at latest.

Be nice, write a short blurb asking the Senate to KILL this billSB459. If it fails here, it will be coming to the house side, but may be harder to kill at that time.

Pass around and ask others to do the same, all the information and senator’s emails and phone numbers are below. You must email or call only, no online submission is allowed, that window has passed.

 OPPOSE OTP – SB459

This bill adds emotional and psychological harm as benchmarks for presumption of harm to a child. While we acknowledge that psychological abuse is real, it is not something that can be measured. Only objective, measurable, quantifiable metrics should be used as a reason to terminate parental rights. We fear the consequences of this bill will be that parents will end up bringing in their experts to oppose the state’s experts with opposing opinions leaving children stuck in the middle because of the subjective nature of the metrics.

This Republican sponsored bill has some explaining to do. If this bill were to substitute parents, guardians, or caretakers for PUBLIC SCHOOLS, I would agree with it. With public schools using social, emotional learning (SEL) to identify which students are in tier 1, 2 or 3 of mental health intervention, also known as Multi-Tier System of Support for Behavioral Health and Wellness (MTSS-B, the mental health piece of the SEL pie) this would give DCYF superpowers to intervene and possibly take kids from families. This could increase DCYF caseload by 10 to 20 percent and DCYF/DHHS plans on hiring 35 new people, costing the state about 4 million a year (see fiscal note section on bill).

The intention for creating this bill may be right, but it’s a horrible bill by adding emotional, social and even psychological health into the bill. It uses vague, non-concrete words like: recklessly, attention, emotional, or psychological well-being. Emotional, social, and psychological are unable to be 100% reproducible where each person tested would produce exactly the same results. Each person is different (you like hunting Bambi to put food on your table and I think it’s emotionally traumatic to kill an animal, or you like allowing abortions up to 6 months and I am traumatized that anyone could let this happen).

Look at sections 6 and 7 closely… Shoot, look at this whole bill very closely, there are just too many things I see wrong and subjective. It just gives DCYF more power and leaves the parents, guardians, and caretakers helpless.

The full bill if you would like to read it:

https://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/bill_status/pdf.aspx?id=22701&q=billVersion

Senate Emails:

Copy and paste all, or choose who you want to email. First 14 are Republicans, last 10 are Democrats.

(Note: Sometimes it is worthwhile to send a different message to the Republican legislators vs a message to Democrats. They will generally have vastly different reasons for supporting/opposing and it’s a chance to appeal to their way of thinking. -S.O.)