From the Washington Post:

Nebraska legislators have convened a special session to revise the state’s safe haven law, which has enabled parents from half a dozen states to abandon 35 children with no questions asked over the past few months. Twenty-seven of the abandoned children have a history of mental health problems.

The law was created last summer in an attempt to provide for babies and toddlers abandoned by young mothers, but set no age limit. Officials now say the law’s fallout reveals a larger crisis.

“Looking back, a number of us would have voted differently,” Sen. Mike Flood (R), the speaker of the Nebraska legislature. “But it has uncovered a bigger issue. It demonstrates a need for families in crisis.”

… All states have some version of a safe-haven law for infants, but Nebraska’s experience has delivered two lessons, experts said. The first is that families need services, such as respite care and psychiatric attention, before their lives reach a crisis point. The second is that the services need to be widely known and accessible.

See earlier posts here, here, and here.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 12:25 pm and is filed under families, mental health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.