A 17-year-old boy became the 30th grown child to be surrendered under Nebraska's ambiguous "safe...
Credit: Denelson83 | ©Wikimedia Commons-Public Domain
Nebraska Legislature to Hold Emergency Session This Friday
A 17-year-old boy was surrendered by his mother at Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska on Monday morning. The teen is the 30th child to be abandoned under Nebraska's new Safe Haven laws since mid-September.Safe Haven Laws are traditionally put in place to allow parents of newborn babies to surrender them to the state within the first few days after their birth. The Laws were designed to reduce the number of cases in which mothers abandon their newborns in places without medical attention because they feel unable to care for them.
Because the Nebraska Safe Haven Law refers to the legality of surrendering a "child" at state hospitals and does not specify a cutoff age, parents have begun surrendering children as old as 17 at Nebraska hospitals. The thirty children surrendered over the past two months range in age from 1-17, but the majority of them are in their teen years. An 18-year-old girl who was still in the care of her mother was brought to a Lincoln, Nebraska hospital on Sunday for surrender, but hospital officials reported that they would be treating that case as an adult.
Parents desperate to legally surrender their children have traveled from Iowa, Michigan, Georgia and Arizona. All children that have been brought from out of state have now been returned to their home state and brought to the appropriate child welfare authorities.
Most of the parents of the surrendered children have cited uncontrollable behavioral problems as the reason for giving up custody of their children. Twenty of the thirty surrendered children have been brought to hospitals in Douglas County, Nebraska for surrender. Omaha, Nebraska's largest city, is located in Douglas County.
The Nebraska State Legislature has scheduled an emergency session for Friday to discuss whether the law should be revised to specify the age range of children that can be abandoned. The assumption is that the age range will be lowered to exclude teenagers.
Comments
Good information.
This is pretty close to the saddest thing I've ever heard. Sorry, but I'm in the camp of having it changed.
Thanks Ba! :)
Ba Part Two
(Guest)
(Guest)
11/14/2008
A loving environment that gives these children an opportunity to grow up and not be abused. Isn't it funny, that our social services, often times have to TAKE children from their homes by force, when they think they are in a bad situation for the child, but here you have evidence that people want to do whats right for a child and the social services are trying to turn them away??
Ba
(Guest)
(Guest)
11/14/2008
"The real question is: should this law be changed? With the amount of effort that social service agencies put into trying to prevent child abuse and neglect, parents of these children may actually be doing what's in the best interests of these children. By expressing their inability and unwillingness to care for their children, it could be argued that these surrendered teenagers would be better off in the hands of the state who will at least provide for their basic necessities."
FINALLY a REPORTER that is asking that question!!! Just because no one has offered to take unwanted children in our recent past before this safe haven law, doesn't mean there haven't been unwanted and abandoned and abused children. This is at least a way that families can get the help they need, in a SAFE WAY for the families and more importantly the children.
maybe we need state run orphanages that will take in unwanted children the way they used to do way back in our history. A loving environment that g
Ba
(Guest)
(Guest)
11/14/2008
"The real question is: should this law be changed? With the amount of effort that social service agencies put into trying to prevent child abuse and neglect, parents of these children may actually be doing what's in the best interests of these children. By expressing their inability and unwillingness to care for their children, it could be argued that these surrendered teenagers would be better off in the hands of the state who will at least provide for their basic necessities."
FINALLY a REPORTER that is asking that question!!! Just because no one has offered to take unwanted children in our recent past before this safe haven law, doesn't mean there haven't been unwanted and abandoned and abused children. This is at least a way that families can get the help they need, in a SAFE WAY for the families and more importantly the children.
maybe we need state run orphanages that will take in unwanted children the way they used to do way back in our history. A loving environment that g
I'm on the fence here. Is it fair to abandon a 17 year old who is 1 year away from 18 and adulthood? Probably not. At that point, the parents need to buck up and explore other options. No one wants a child endangered and I do feel that the law was meant more for babies and young children than nearly grown problem teenagers. If you have the bucks to spend on gas to get to Nebraska, then you have the bucks to get your problem child counseling.
Sylvia-Exactly. It seems to me that if parents are literally BEGGING for someone to take their kids away from them, then we should consider it a blessing. For the kids, it's an awful situation either way, but at least if they're surrendered to the state, their basic needs willbe taken care of. It's rough.
Good reporting!
very well done here!
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