Safe Haven

My first real teaching job was a summer school job teaching at a group home for middle school and high school boys. Oh, was it interesting! And stressful. But also sad. I saw kids with serious mental health issues who would max out of the state system at 18. I wondered what would happen to these kids when medications ran out and counselors could no longer serve them. A week or so ago, I think I saw the answer to that question. One of the boys who used to be in that facility was arrested for stabbing someone. Not just slashing at them, stabbing them. When the police arrived, the woman had a knife in her back. For most of the boys I taught, I am afraid that prison will be their permenant dwelling place.

I also saw an adoptive family who was essentially disrupting their adoption without the legalities of disruption. They adopted their son, V, as a toddler who had been horribly abused. As he became a teenager, it was clear that he was a threat as a sexual perpetrator. This family had daughters who were younger than him. They felt that as hard as it was, they could not have him in their home. They often drove 2 hours to visit him but knew he would never be coming home.

Interestingly enough, these kids have been in my mind a lot lately. This fall, the state of Nebraska passed a safe haven law. Many other states have laws like this that make it legal for women to leave their infants at hospitals, police stations, and fire departments. These laws were designed to prevent woman who feel hopeless from discarding their children in dumpsters or otherwise abandoning their newborn children.

When Nebraska passed their law, they did not include any age requirements. The law as currently written makes it legal for any age of child to be dropped off at safe haven locations. In the few months that have gone by since the legislation passed, not one infant has been dropped off. 36 older children have. Most of these children were teenagers. At least 3 were from other states including Georgia and Michigan. Families in crisis, families who are desperate, families who feel like they have no other options, these families have now taken center stage. Many Nebraskans have been forced to accept the reality that there are many parents and children who are hanging on for dear life, who are in some giant tug of war where winning doesn't really feel like winning. This law has pointed out that for kiddos like my former students, unless you have committed a crime, help can be hard to come by. For kids who are not in the juvenille courts system or the health and human services system due to abuse or neglect, help often is far away. Help is expensive. Help cannot be forced. Help often comes only after a horrible tragedy has occurred.

Are all of the parents who have left their children purely motivated by a desire for their children to get help? Of course not. But to think that the majority of these people are adults who simply want their lives to be easier, that these parents think that it's not their responsibility to care for and nurture their children, well I just don't buy it. These are desperate people doing drastic things.

Tomorrow, our legislature will be meeting in a special session to work on ammending the safe haven law so that it will have a more narrow age limit. The law will be rewritten and the "abandoned" children quickly forgotten. But there will still be families who don't know where to turn or what to do next. I hope and pray our leaders invest their energies into providing real solutions for families who really do need a safe haven as they deal with attachment issues, pychological disorders, and a lack of affordable resources.