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Nebraska no longer a safe haven: what to do with the kids now?

Nebraska was the last state to institute a safe haven law. The original intent of this law was to stop mothers from leaving their newborn infants in dumpsters, if they decided they did not want them, or for some reason could not care for them. The legislature could not decide on an appropriate age limit; and therefore employed the word “child.” This meant that any child under the age of 18 could be left at a Nebraska hospital, and the parent could not be charged with abandonment by law.

Now the law has been changed and an age limit of 30 days has been introduced.

The full text of LB 157 read: “No person shall be prosecuted for any crime based solely upon the act of leaving a child in the custody of an employee on duty at a hospital licensed by the State of Nebraska. The hospital shall promptly contact appropriate authorities to take custody of the child.”

In the lifetime of this law 27 drop offs occurred and 36 children were given up by their parents. Parents drove from as far away as California to relinquish their parental rights. One man left all 9 of his children behind.

According to USA Today, Todd Landry of Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services stated that, “the four oldest of the nine siblings were placed together in an emergency shelter and the others in a foster home. They’re struggling to varying degrees with what’s happened to them.”

To be abandoned by a parent can be an extremely traumatic thing for a child. In this case many of the children were of an age that they could understand exactly what the parent was doing even as it was happening. One can only imagine the pleading of the child, and the promises they must have made about behavioural changes as the parents headed toward the hospital exit.

The harm of that one moment alone is going to require hours of counselling. Even rebelling children ultimately want the love and support of their parents. We believe that a parent’s love for a child should be unconditional and unwavering. When the opposite happens the rejection is personal and earth shattering.

Landry suggested that parents chose to abandon their kids because, “they were tired of their parenting role. He says child behavioural problems, not family financial woes, were a factor”

I believe that the above statement is very revelatory. Landry meant it as an indictment against the parents who chose to leave behind their children; it is in actuality an indictment of disappearing social services.

We no longer live in a time where parents can count on a support network to help raise their children. It is no longer financially feasible for one parent to stay home and raise children, and the state is daily reducing, or ending, programs that have traditionally helped families in need.

These reductions are combined with the added stress of working more hours than ever before; while surviving with less disposable income than our parents. Even in the most supportive of environments parenting is an extremely difficult job. Children do not come with manuals, and they seem to exist to try every single nerve ending in your body.

We have this idea that inside their little single family domiciles that people are living the Harriet and Ozzie lifestyle. This could not be further from the truth. Even the 1950’s were not the idealized family groupings that we have constructed them to be.

Now that we no longer live in inter-generational families, most of the strain falls directly on the parents. Schools do what they can to alleviate some of the strain, but with one teacher to 20-25 kids, only so much can be done.

If you happen to have a special needs child, navigating the system to get aid can be a difficult experience. Parents are often shamed for not being able to control their child. We are expected to medicate them into submission if necessary, but under no circumstances are we to relinquish control, or admit defeat.

Yet the average parent is not a trained professional in the area of child psychology. Loving someone does not mean that you naturally acquire the tools to be able to help them. Many of the children that were dropped off have mental health issues.

Instead of the state admitting that this is a failure on its part to help families that are struggling, they have chosen to blame the parents. Yet for many this was an act of desperation – far too many people reach time and time for help, only to meet a brick wall.

Safe Haven laws were designed to protect newborn infants, but a 6 year old child is still a vulnerable person. Removing the opportunity for parents to leave their children in the care of the state is not going to eliminate the need for such a service. By closing this loophole in the law the state has once again abdicated its responsibility to children. What happens to all of the other families that are still out there who are desperately overwhelmed?

We need to begin to develop real programs to help these families. Calling in the super-nanny in not going to cut it either. Parents need a place to turn when they are at the end of their rope. More free family counselling needs to be available. Socialized day care should be available to give parents and children a break from each other on occasion.

We need to strengthen programs that we know work, like the Boys and Girls Club of America, or the local YMCA’s. We need more youth centers and mentoring programs. Overwhelmed, parents need to know that they are not in this alone. Medical services need to be extended to deal with any special health issues that children are dealing with.

Instead of spending time pointing fingers and shaming parents, we need to think about who is really suffering in this situation – the children. Assigning blame without even trying to come up with any constructive solutions to the issues that the families are undergoing does not solve anything.

The action of these parents was a cry for help, and unless we start to deal with the issues we are only exacerbating the problem, and putting even more children at risk.

5 thoughts on “Nebraska no longer a safe haven: what to do with the kids now?

  1. I really enjoyed this article. I have been struggling a lot with my feelings about the Safe Haven Law. On the one hand, I was horrified by the effect the older children would encounter by being abandoned by their parents. but I also realized that most parents that did this were in fact desperate. I think one thing to take into account is that certain types of parents are the ones that drop their kids off her. By that I mean, generally better off and with more knowledge about the world around them. I work in the mental health field and many of the parents I deal with have their own problems combined with that of their kids. THey don’t have the money or the wherewithal to find a place that they can drop their kids off, so the cycle continues. They may put them in some type of treatment but they don’t have the motivation or the ability to truly work with the therapist to help their kids. They want them fixed or they want the finger pointed away from themselves or they just don’t grasp how the family dynamic works. It’s a very sad situation and there are soo many programs that are underfunded but there are also problems with getting children and families involved in the programs that do exist.

  2. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

    I have been so really angry at the way people have been reacting to the story about Nebraska’s Safe Haven Law.

    I worked for a couple of years at a non-profit agency that worked with At Risk Youth. We had a short term stay shelter for teens who were homeless for whatever reason. Many of the kids were referred by their own parents, because the parents were truly at the end of their rope. The kids were either threatening to run away, or the parents were so frustrated they were afraid they were going to hurt their own kids.

    There must be somewhere these kids can go while social workers help the family deal with the issues going on. I can’t tell you how many times we had to turn kids away because we were already over capacity.

    Sure, everyone wants to help the cute little, adoptable newborn. But no one wants to deal with the older kids who have behavioral issues or abusive parents or just growing pains that throw the entire family into turmoil. These kids need help, too! Instead of taking money out of social services, we need to be putting money in!

    And if the case is that the parent really just doesn’t want to be a parent, are people really happy with the thought of leaving children with them in an atmosphere of neglect? Sorry, but I’m not.

  3. Safe Haven laws were designed to protect newborn infants, but a 6 year old child is still a vulnerable person. Removing the opportunity for parents to leave their children in the care of the state is not going to eliminate the need for such a service. By closing this loophole in the law the state has once again abdicated its responsibility to children. What happens to all of the other families that are still out there who are desperately overwhelmed?

    This assumes the states adequately cares for children. It does not. One could speak with hundreds of thousands of people left in foster care limbo, moved from home to home, thrown into group homes, placed in juvenile prison and forced to grow up without any sense of family, belonging or love because they were wards of the state.

    Ultimately, the responsibility does lie with parents. It is their failures that have caused the problems their children have. It is their assumption that there are “quick fixes” make them desperate in the first place. I volunteer to work with foster children. I live with foster children. Nothing comes easy. Every troubled child needs time. Too many parents expect a month of therapy and a few pills will solve everything. I wonder what these 36 parents actually did to address the needs of their apparently unwanted children. Did they try to change their own behavior or just the kids’?

    I am far less concerned with whether parents are at their wits end. I am more concerned about the impact of being thrown away and abandoned. What these parents did permanently damaged those 36 children’s trust of adults. In every relationship those kids will have they will doubt whether the person genuinely loves them and cares for them. That does not seem like a fair trade. The parents get rid of their headaches while the children realize that the people who claimed to loved them the do not actually care about them at all.

  4. Toy Soldier–

    These parents might have serious mental problems of their own. In fact, if they have kids with serious problems, chances are they have the very same problems that the children do.

    For whatever reason, because they suck as people or because they’re honestly too fucked up, they feel they cannot care for their children. And chances are, if they feel that strongly about it, they really shouldn’t have kids.

    And we still don’t know for sure about THESE abandoned kids, but work and time doesn’t fix all kids. Some children are born evil and the rest of the family shouldn’t have to live with that child hurting and destroying everything.

  5. I think it’s ridiculous that people are dropping off their kids just because they can’t handle behavioral issues, or they get stressed out because their spouse died and left them with 9 kids to raise on their own or that they claim they can’t afford them anymore. You know what, people? STOP HAVING THE DAMN KIDS!!!!! If you think BEFORE having kids that you would not be good at handling the above situations, then please do your future children a favor and DO NOT HAVE THEM!! You are selfish, cruel, mentally unstable, abusive, inconsiderate, irresponsible, and ignorant for dumping your kids off just because life threw you a curve ball and you are too stupid to figure out how to handle it. There are MANY other safe and legal routes to take to get the help your child needs, and don’t use the excuse that you can’t find anything because you ain’t lookin’ too hard. If I can find at least 320 different agencies in my own state alone that help with emergency situations when dealing with difficult behavioral issues with children, then you can certainly find a few yourself. Stop using that as an excuse, grow up, and take some freakin’ responsibility for your totally inadequate parenting skills.

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