Desperate and nowhere to turn

November 24, 2008

Helen Redmond and Nicole Colson examine the controversy over a "safe haven" law in Nebraska that exposed the shortcomings of the U.S. social welfare system.

THE INTERSECTION of the economic and health care crisis in the United States is playing out in Nebraska in the controversy over a law that allows desperate families to surrender their children to the state.

In all, 36 children under the age of 18 have been given up to the state since Nebraska instituted a "safe haven" law in July.

Nebraska was the last state in the country to adopt such a law, which enables parents to surrender infants at hospitals and other facilities with no questions asked and no fear of prosecution. But the law didn't specify an upper age limit on the children who could be surrendered, so parents gave up older children--as old as 17. In at least six cases, parents traveled from other states to do so.

Safe haven laws have been effective in reducing the number of infants abandoned in dangerous circumstances or, worse, killed or neglected. The looser language in the Nebraska law showed the desperate need for support for parents in cases beyond infants.

But instead of looking for ways to help the parents and children, Nebraska lawmakers rushed into a special session this month--at an estimated cost of $70,000 to $80,000--to change the law to impose age limits. Now, only infants up to 30 days old can be left at a hospital.

Lavennia Coover, who gave up her 11-year-old son, testifies in front of Nebraska's Judiciary Committee
Lavennia Coover, who gave up her 11-year-old son, testifies in front of Nebraska's Judiciary Committee

Thus, what an Associated Press story labeled the "child-dumping loophole" was closed.


IT'S A comment on the prejudices of the mainstream media that what happened in Nebraska could be called "child dumping."

The desperation of the parents who surrendered children is heartbreaking. Some face extreme poverty, an illness or death in their family, or other hardships. Others turned to the safe haven law as a last resort to obtain help for children with severe mental health issues after being unable to find--and in some cases denied--assistance.

One man dropped off nine of his children (ranging in age from 17 years old to 1 year old) in September, saying that since his wife had died a year ago, he couldn't cope with raising them.

The mother of an 18-year-old in Lincoln, Neb., was repeatedly turned down when she sought help from social services, the school and police. Her adopted daughter was assaulting her, stealing and not attending school. The girl had been diagnosed with a mental illness at age 12, and has deep emotional scars from childhood abuse and being left alone with her dead biological mother for a week.

Melyssa Cowburn's adopted 5-year-old child was diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder. He stabbed a cat, tried to hit a baby on the head with a hammer, flooded the apartment and set the shower curtain on fire.

Cowburn and her husband repeatedly tried to get health insurance to pay for mental health treatment for the child. Melyssa's husband, an ex-Marine, rejoined the military to pay for the child's medications. He was deployed to Afghanistan, and Melyssa moved to Omaha be near her mother. She then tried to commit suicide. The child was placed in foster care while she was hospitalized. After both returned home, Melyssa couldn't handle her son and finally left him at a hospital.

Lavennia Coover, a kindergarten teacher and divorced mother of three, was at the end of her rope when she surrendered her 11-year-old son Skylar, who suffers from bipolar disorder and has violent outbursts.

After three years of ineffective and expensive psychiatric care, Coover saw no other way to get the kind of help for her son that he needed. He had spent a three-day stint in emergency psychiatric care during Labor Day weekend, but the family's insurance refused to cover any more.

On September 24, with her son becoming more aggressive, Coover drove Skylar to the Alegent Health-Immanuel Medical Center in Omaha and surrendered him, as she wept in the emergency room. "I still cry every night," Coover told the New York Times. "What parent wouldn't feel guilty doing this?"

Yet instead of sympathy and support, child welfare officials in Douglas County, Nebraska, charged Coover with neglect--which could jeopardize her job as a teacher and her custody of two other children (including a daughter who also suffers from bipolar disorder).


STATE LEGISLATORS showed the same kind of callousness when they convened a special legislative session to put a 30-day-old age limit on the safe haven law.

The lawmakers' amendment was accompanied by a "blame the victim" mentality among politicians and the media that smeared parents who surrendered their children as lazy or irresponsible. In one protest supporting the age limit, demonstrators held signs proclaiming that "Responsibility starts at home."

"People are leaving them off just because they can't control them," state Sen. Arnie Stuthman, who introduced the original safe haven bill, told the Associated Press. "They're probably in no real danger, so it's an easy way out for the caretaker."

Of course, there's nothing "easy" about the wrenching decision these parents made to give up their children.

One of the few voices of reason came from state Sen. Amanda McGill, who told the Los Angeles Times that the number of children surrendered "has been a blessing in disguise. It has brought to light a serious problem. These parents were at wit's end. People don't want to give up their kids. They just want to get them help."

Changing the age limit on Nebraska's safe haven law does nothing to solve the host of underlying problems--increased financial stress due to the recession; a critical lack of social services for families in crisis; chronically overworked and underpaid aid workers; and, especially, the lack of affordable health care, particularly mental health care.

Insurers discriminate against both adults and children with mental illness and find ways to avoid covering them. When they do provide coverage, care is restricted. It's simply not profitable for insurers to treat chronic mental illnesses that aren't curable. And for the estimated 47 million Americans who are uninsured, it's almost impossible to get ongoing care for mental illness.

According to the Boston Globe:

The abrupt handovers in Nebraska are striking examples of an ongoing, more orderly phenomenon that exposes the shortage of psychiatric help for children. A 2003 report by the General Accounting Office, compiling responses from only 19 states and 30 counties, found that 12,700 children in one year had been placed in child welfare or juvenile justice systems simply so they could receive mental health care.

Instead of spending $80,000 to change the safe haven law, Nebraska officials should have been asking how to help families in crisis. In fact, Nebraska's spending on child care and mental health is among the lowest in the nation, and its rate of foster care placement among the highest.

"This isn't just something that's come up lately," state Sen. Gwen Howard, a former state Health and Human Services case manager, told the Los Angeles Times. "This is like a tsunami that's been building."

Yet in Nebraska, the same politicians who talk about the "sanctity" of the family and how no child should be "left behind" are doing next to nothing to help children in urgent need of mental health care.

The money to help families in crisis is there. A country that can find $700 billion for a bailout of the banking system and $2 billion a week for the war in Iraq can surely find the money to help the hundreds of thousands of families that are suffering and in crisis all over the country.

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