Nov 05 2008
Standardization final
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/opinion/05wed3.html
Nebraska’s Abandoned Families
Published: November 4, 2008
The Nebraska Legislature had newborn infants and desperate young mothers in mind when it passed a law that allows parents to surrender unwanted children to the state without fear of prosecution. In just a few months, more than two dozen children as old as 17 have been abandoned, usually by parents or guardians who claimed that the children were uncontrollable.
Gov. Dave Heineman has called a special session of the Legislature so that the law can be rewritten to protect only newborns. But lawmakers will need to do a lot more to address the causes of these disturbing and unusual abandonments.
One of the central issues in Nebraska — and in much of the rest of the country — is that the social service and juvenile justice systems provide little help to families with troubled children, many of whom have mental or emotional problems. In general, the state gets involved only after the law has been broken, when a child has been abused or neglected by a parent or has committed a crime and ended up in custody.
According to a recent analysis by Voices for Children in Nebraska, a well-known advocacy group, even before the recent abandonments, some parents decided that their only chance for getting counseling or mental health care for their children was to make them wards of the state. That is a true choice of desperation — and one that is hugely costly for everyone.
It increases the likelihood that the child will remain entangled with the juvenile justice system — and end up in prison as an adult. Treating children in custody costs a great deal more than helping them in community-based settings.
Critics rightly charge that Nebraska has spent too much effort and money on removing children from their homes and too little on preventing problems with early intervention. When the Legislature reconvenes, it should focus on ways to help struggling families, providing child-care subsidies for low-income families and children’s health insurance. No parent should have to abandon a troubled child just to get help.
1. Nebraska Legislature lets families give up children they can’t care for.
2. More than 2 dozen children, as old as 17, were given up to receive ‘better care’.
a) the law will now be rewritten to include only newborns, as was originally intended.
4. Many underprivileged families cannot help their troubled childrens by providing them with counselling, etc.
5. Some families think best mental health care etc. can be provided through state.
6. State will only get involved when laws are broken in some cases.
Thus,
7. Giving up children for ‘better care’ is dangerous and usually harmful to children, sometimes leading to a tangled web of the juvenile justice system.
Therefore,
8. Legislature should focus on providing support and funding to low-income families so they do not have to go to such lengths as giving up their own children.
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looks good to me, honestly.