"It is the responsibility of our society to make sure that fellow residents are not left behind due to medical, mental, or financial setbacks."
-Speaker Tom Finneran

Tom Finneran has been a particularly vocal and long-time supporter of much of the Commonwealth's health and social support network. As Speaker, he oversaw the creation of the Children's Trust Fund in 1998. It has since emerged as the state's focal point for prevention policy and program development in helping the families of young children. Of the programs run by the Children's Trust Fund, Tom Finneran is a particularly strong supporter of Healthy Families, a voluntary home visiting program to support first-time parents who are under the age of 20. Home visiting has proven to reduce child abuse, improve educational and economic outcomes for parents, improve health outcomes for children, and reduce subsequent pregnancies among teenage mothers. To date, over 6,000 families throughout the Commonwealth have been served.

While he was Chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, Tom Finneran helped to pass a law which helps young adults with severe disabilities who are still in need of services transition into the Commonwealth's adult human services program. Known as the Turning 22 Law, it provides for a two-year transitional process for those young adults who will lose their entitlement to special education upon graduation or reaching the age of 22, and it creates a single point of entry into the adult human services system by developing an Individual Transition Plan for every person with a severe disability who is found eligible.

Speaker Finneran has also worked with the Department of Social Services to increase adoption advertising efforts and to increase the amount of money given to foster parents to care for the children that the state entrusts to them.

In addition, he has worked alongside the Department of Mental Health to reduce the number of "stuck kids" in Massachusetts. Although these children are not sufficiently ill, they are stuck in psychiatric beds in hospitals instead of being cared for in group homes or as outpatients because the non-hospital programs have an insufficient number of open spaces. The Legislature has recently taken steps to increase non-hospital treatment options, creating better conditions for the affected children and saving money for the Commonwealth.

Speaker Finneran will continue his commitment to the people on the margins of society by supporting human services to the greatest extent allowed by our fiscal situation.