Nebraska Amends 'Safe Haven' Laws

They are still sweeping their problems under the rug by turning their backs on them. But then again those of us who are too poor to do for ourselves without help have always been expendable.

“babies only 30 days old and younger can be dropped with no questions asked.”

I guess they’re not set up to take care of older children. Nevertheless, only desperate parents, who know they are not able to provide for their children economically or emotionally, give them up. It is such a tragedy.

Those people are not saying “they no longer support them”, they are saying that they CAN no longer support them.
They are not say “They no longer love them” they are saying they love them enough to get them to a place where they know they will get food and clothing and health care.
The people who are taking their children there are making sure they have a place to go. There is a need for something like this, maybe it isn’t Nebraska but where is it?

From what I’ve read, the older children who have been left at the safe havens in Nebraska are mostly children with mental health issues such as Autism and Bipolar Disorder, with parents whose insurance will not pay for the care they need and these parents just don’t know what to do. We need to get our act together in this country and reset our priorities. It is shameful that in the USA there are families struggling like this with no help.

………okay, so I’m a single, homeless girl who got raped on the street…went thru the pregnancy with minimal health care, only what I could get at free clinics. I’m not even sure of my due date. I have the baby in a county hospital, and after 24 hours I am released with the baby because we are okay. I stay with friends, family, shelters, whatever I can and on the day the baby is 31 days old, circumstances see me living on the street again with no way to take care of this baby. Does it mean, that because my baby is 31 days old, I can’t make the choice to give him/her up to a better life? What about the kids who really DON’T have anyone willing to keep them? Who are 2 and 4 and 7? What are they supposed to do? I’m afraid for these children……….

these laws have to change Obama, has to do something for the US and there children, i do realize other country’s have there problems, but help us the US first. it great that Judd and Jolie, do there thing across the seas. but where help for our families? we have homeless children and adults, that need our help first! people that spend millions on wedding and there parties, or dog houses, stop and think, who might need a meal or a warm dry place to sleep. i was raised in a car, many years ago.

I hear all you here talking the talk. Now are you willing to get together and walk the walk? Frankly, I am afraid of many of you people. Because I am a living, breathing, member of this 3rd World America. Yet; whenever I have mustered up the courage to tell my story and ask for help, I have been ripped to shreds. Even here in this site where I came with hope in my heart months ago - to the Change The World section - I was called names to the point of slander and told that my own life that I have been living could not possibly be true. I admit that in other parts of this site this has not happened; but, I have not poured out my life’s story or asked for help in any of these other parts either. I survive with enough pain that even though I desperately want change for my population; I do not wish to bring more grief on myself.

How can anything change when everyone speaks of this need for change while they themselves deny it and lift not a finger of help? I have been nearly nothinged to death while others merely speak of this great need for change. How many like me must die, our children left homeless in this cold system before those who can are willing to step up to the plate and do something? And for those of us whose children have already suffered our deaths; how will you explain your belated actions to them? And how will you know how best to help if you are not willing to listen to those living this life? A high or middle income person (except those who come from this background) can no more know what I need than a tailor knows what a plumber needs. All the talk in this world did not help my children and it will not save my granddaughter or me either.
Please, please, stop talking of this mythical village and make it a reality by being that village.

Although I completely and totally understand the State of Nebraska’s concern about the spike in abandoned children and the financial obligation that means to their books; there is something extremely disturbing about this reversal. They now know there is something going on in and around their state in regard to parents giving up their parental rights at an alarming level. Now that they know this is the case, what is being done to address why so many adults are choosing this option? It’s not enough to simply tell parents this is not an option any longer. What will happen now with all of the teens and young children that “would” have been dropped off at safe sites? Will they now become homeless, tossed to the streets since their parents can’t leave them at safe sites? Either way they will become a financial drain of sorts on the community in one way or another.

There are no easy answers to this issue…I understand. It just breaks my heart that this is even an issue in our country. The most unsettling part of this to me is as the economy continues to falter; something tells me more and more children are going to be left to fend for themselves because parents are going to feel they can’t care for their needs. I pray I’m wrong, and I really mean that. I’m trying desperately to keep an open mind about these parents and have compassion for their life choices, but I have to be honest….it’s hard. I always think of the children first.

If many of the older kids dropped off are suffering from mental disorders, does this curtailment of dropping of older kids by passing a law with an age of 31 days mean the state isn’t willing to cope with these older kids either??? What will happen to these kids???? Are these the kids who become street kids? And why little kids are beaten to death, or burned with cigarettes, or scalded, or drowned?

There’s a neighbor child by me who was taken in by his grandparents….the cops are called a couple of times weekly to help the grandparents control him…..he starts fires, he spray paints (our truck was one who got painted with spray paint)……I doubt that I could cope with a child like this. It appears to me that things sometimes are beyond a person’s coping level.

If the parent can’t cope then they just can’t, but each state needs to do something to care for these older kids.