Senators must use '40 days, 40 night'

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Barring the unforeseen, the Legislature today will limit safe haven in Nebraska to babies 30 days or younger, and Gov. Dave Heineman will sign the bill into law.

The age limit is a reasonable choice. There’s no consensus among the other 49 states on the best age limit. Nebraska will join 13 other states that have decided a month is an appropriate time period for a mother to decide to abandon her infant without fear of criminal charges.

A 30-day limit is preferable to the 3-day limit that senators had agreed to in an informal poll last month. That 72-hour period was too short. Mothers who delivered their babies by caesarean often still would have been in the hospital.

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The story so far: the Legislature's special session

Get all the coverage of the Legislature's special session called to address Nebraska's safe haven law. (Katie Nieland/JournalStar.com)...

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Enactment of the law in a special session is hardly an occasion worth celebrating. It just fixes a problem that never should have existed in the first place.

There is, however, a distinct possibility that something positive could emerge from the experience.

That’s the resolve voiced by some state senators to address the deep-seated problems exposed in the past few weeks.

The Legislature has “40 days and 40 nights,” said Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha, to come up with better answers on how to deliver more effective services for adolescents with mental and behavioral problems.

Most of the children who were dropped off under the no-age-limit law had a record of needing mental health care.

On Thursday, six state senators agreed to form a task force aimed at helping children and families in crisis.

Chairing the task force will be Sen. Amanda McGill of Lincoln. Other members are Sens. Annette Dubas of Fullerton, Tim Gay of Papillion, Gwen Howard of Omaha, Dave Pankonin of Louisville and Arnie Stuthman of Platte Center.

The task force plans to have three meetings before the next legislative session begins, with the first session scheduled for Dec. 2 at Boys Town. The meetings will include mental health service providers, government agencies and private sector advocates such as Boys Town officials.

They will be confronting inadequacies and problems that have no easy solution. As Wayne Sensor, head of Alegent Health told state senators, there are “clearly gaps in services” for the behavioral and mental health of children.

The parents and guardians who dropped off children at Alegent hospitals during the months that a window of opportunity opened up “were in absolute meltdown. Their lives were out of control. They had tried everything,” Sensor said.

As Father Steven Boes, national executive director of Boys Town, said in a Local View column in the Journal Star, “Getting children and families the right care at the right time is critical.

“We already know that dropping them off is not the answer.”