Nebraska to Alter Safe-Haven Law

Courtney Anderson and her seven fellow emergency room social workers at Omaha's Immanuel Medical Center have seen 11 children surrendered to state custody. They found children who had no idea that they were being turned over to the state.

"I'll go in and say, 'Do you know why you're here?' " Anderson, 29, explained in her first interview with a reporter. "If they don't know, I'll say, 'We don't know all the details of what's going on, but you're safe.'

"We offer them a blanket, something to eat and turn the TV on."

The reactions from the teenagers vary.

"I'm struck by the ones who say they are fine," Anderson said. "I've had some say, 'I don't want to go home. Just admit me. Get me a bed.' "

One of the first children she met was a preteen who arrived with his mother late at night after traveling from a far corner of the state. The mother was crying. She told Anderson that she felt guilty but had tried everything else.

It was on the long drive that she told the boy what was happening. She made sure to carry the boy's medications, and she stayed for several hours to be sure that hospital staff members, the police and state officials knew his history.

"She said, 'I hope you will put him with someone who will treat him really well.' "

Troubled children and the children of struggling parents continually cycle in and out of state custody, foster homes and juvenile courts across the country. Nebraska alone oversees 6,600 children who are wards of the state, said Jeanne Atkinson, a spokeswoman at Nebraska's Department of Health and Human Services.

Of the first 30 children abandoned in Nebraska, 27 had received mental health services; 28 came from single-parent homes; and 22 had a parent or guardian who had been jailed.

Twenty of the children were white, nine black and one Native American.

Children dropped off under the safe-haven law are passed along to the family court system, where judges seek solutions. More than half are now wards of the state, either in Nebraska or in their home states, Atkinson said.