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By Nancy Hicks
The 5-year-old boy stabbed at a Lincoln group home was on many people's minds Wednesday as state leaders gave final approval to a mental health reform plan.
Before the Legislature approved the landmark bill (LB1083) on a 44-2 vote, several senators suggested public safety must be a priority as more patients in state mental hospitals move into community-based programs.
They spent more than hour discussing last week's stabbing at a Lincoln group home. A resident - who was required to be under 24-hour supervision - is accused of pulling a neighborhood boy into the home and stabbing him.
Health and Human Services leaders should learn from the incident, Lincoln Sen. Chris Beutler said. "I was shaken and I have a whole number of concerns."
In the past year, Beutler said, police were called 30 times to the group home, where six men lived.
"Thirty times. What does that tell us about placement (of these men into community group homes)? Why was one little group home relying on police? What are the criteria for placement?"
Under the mental health reform plan, regional centers in Norfolk and Hastings would close and local communities would provide services for people with serious mental illness. The Lincoln Regional Center would remain open to house high-risk clients and sex offenders, and to provide care for area people ordered committed to a locked program.
Because of the plan, Beutler said, "more people will be in group homes, and we need to reassure the public that the way this is being done, our kids are safe."
Beutler questioned why someone who was violent and had to be watched 24 hours a day had been released to a community program.
Said Lincoln Sen. DiAnna Schimek: "We need to be acutely concerned about safety."
She read a letter from the boy's parents, who suggested the creation of rules or laws to address safety issues, and said the state sanctioned poorly run group homes.
"I'm not trying to stop the bill," Schimek said. But neighbors deserve answers, she said, and the state must make certain that "putting group homes in a neighborhood is not a detrimental thing."
Though the incident raised questions about moving people into community programs, Omaha Sen. Jim Jensen said reform wasn't the problem - it's the solution.
"With diligence we can develop a system that is better,"said Jensen, who wrote the reform plan. "That is my goal.
"Out of this tragedy we can develop some good," Jensen said.
After the stabbing, Gov. Mike Johanns ordered the Health and Human Services System to review files of people similar to the suspect to see whether they were in secure residences.
The suspect, Roger Einspahr, was a resident in the sexual offender unit at the Lincoln Regional Center before he moved to the group home.
Before he signed the legislation into law, Johanns met with the boy's parents. Later, he called safety concerns legitimate.
"Our role has to be to make sure we are protective of the public," said Johanns, a key supporter of the plan.
There is nothing in the plan ordering the release of sex offenders, the governor said. There is nothing that says the state will place dangerous people in neighborhoods. And there is nothing that says the state will be lax in its supervision of group homes.
But now the state finally will be able to implement a mental health system that provides the "appropriate level of care."
"One of the problems with the current system is that we have been inappropriately placing people in costly high-level of care, where they would have done better in a community setting."
Leaders from the Norfolk area, where a regional center will close, expressed support for mental health reform but questioned whether the private sector was ready to care for high-risk people.
There needs to be a parallel system alongside the existing system before institutions are closed, said Jerry McCallum, chairman of the Madison County Board.
A number of police officers who deal with people with mental illness "think this thing is going to fall apart like a $3 watch," Norfolk Sen. Gene Tyson said.
But people with mental illness and their relatives who lobbied for the plan were jubilant.
"What does this mean to us? What did the Industrial Revolution mean to the world?" asked Carole Denton, who runs a Grand Island group home and whose son died last year while trying to hop a train after leaving the Lincoln Regional Center.
"It is a landmark,"she said. "It will bring the treatment of the mentally ill into modern times."
Reach Nancy Hicks at 473-7250 or nhicks@;journalstar.com.
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