Parents leave despair at state’s doorstep

From the Los Angeles Times:

Children’s advocates and parents say Nebraska’s safe-haven law has brought public attention to a long-standing problem: desperate families who struggle to raise mentally ill children with minimal help from the government.

Nebraska has become notorious for being the one place in the country where parents are allowed to abandon children up to age 18. It is expected to amend the measure to allow abandonment only of infants up to 30 days of age. Thirty-five children, almost all of them 11 or older and most with mental health problems, have been abandoned since the law went into effect in September.

“It has been a blessing in disguise,” state Sen. Amanda McGill, who chairs the committee, said of the response to the safe-haven law. “It has brought to light a serious problem.”

“These parents were at wit’s end,” McGill said. “People don’t want to give up their kids. They just want to get them help.”

UPDATE: Governor signs age limit for safe haven law — AP/Houston Chronicle

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 8:32 am and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, families, law, 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.