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I have blogged about the Nebraska Safe Haven Law here and here. This was a bad law that is backfiring in ways in that are going to hurt children.
In the latest case, a sibling group of nine children were left by their father at the Creighton University Medical Center on Wednesday. The children were between the ages of 1 and 17. So far sixteen children have been surrendered since the law took effect two months ago.
Sibling groups are hard to place as it is and trying to find a home for these nine children is not going to be easy if the intent is to keep them together.
We don’t know the details of what made this father surrender his children, but this is going to have a lasting impact on them. With the oldest child being 17 there will most certainly be trauma issues. What will a child of 17 feel about being surrendered at this point?
I am thankful that this father surrendered his children rather than abusing them, but certainly there is a better way to help this family rather than suddenly dropping them off at a hospital and forever changing their lives. Even if social services determines that the family needs services and gets the children to return home, the act of being left at the medical center will damage these children.
Legislators can and need to change this law to reflect the spirit that the law was intended. The intent was to give mothers in a crisis pregnancy an option to place their newborn children rather than killing them or abandoning them someplace that they may not be found. It was not intended to a “catch all” for parents or can’t or won’t handle their children.
The legislature is in recess until January, but the Governor can call them back to revise this law. Right now it looks like that will not be happening, so we could see many more cases of this before January. How many children have to be surrendered before the government takes action on this?
I cannot image what is going through the minds of these children right now. Right now these nine siblings are not placed together. I imagine it would be very difficult to find an emergency placement that could take nine children. At least the older children can understand some of what is going on, but what about the little ones who do not have the ability to comprehend what is happening to their lives? Let’s get these legislators back in session and get them to fix this mess.
I almost think it’s worse for the older kids who DO know what’s going on. This must feel horrible to them.