Nebraska was in the national news for an inadvertent error in its safe have law, which usually is put in place to allow mothers of newborns to drop their infants at a hospital or fire station and not be charged with child abandonment. Unfortunately, the legislative drafters dropped the ball in the final version, and just put down "children" with no age limit. Thirty-five children have been dropped off at hospitals under this law, most of them over 10 years old.
The Nebraska legislature (the Unicam) went into special session this week and changed it to children 30 days of age or less. The governor is expected to sign this bill into law on Friday.
Yet this begs the question: what made all these parents drop their pre-teen and teens off? A recent article indicates that most of these children had received services for mental illness. http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2008/11/20/nebraskas-abandoned-kids-are-mostly-mentally-ill/ Parents weren't dropping their children off because they wanted a free weekend, but because they did not know how to handle them. This highlights a need in Nebraska for social services targeted to this age group and their parents. Time for the executive branch to start planning on how to provide those services.
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