Safe Haven from a Non-Adoption Perspective

Here's a great discussion of Safe Haven (including Nebraska's variation) from a non-adoption perspective.

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2008/11/11/safe-haven/
Psych services are infamously unavailable to the under- and uninsured unless one is a ward of the state. And sometimes when a child becomes a ward of the state services are over-assigned, so families whose employers aren’t as flexible, who don’t have the money to subsidize sliding-scale services, and have existing priorities for other children in the family, find it exceedingly difficult to move toward a successful family reunion. Moreover, family services are starved for cash and their clients are made to feel ashamed for needing their services in the first place.

Should these laws be revised to remove eligibility for children of a certain age to be admitted by parents as wards of the state, or is it better that kids are safely leaving environments in which their parents feel unable to care for them?

I agree with the position that Safe Haven laws protecting anonymity are a sop to the most regressive elements of the adoption industry. Anonymity does not benefit abandoned children in any way. I totally disagree with it. But anonymity is not the only issue involved here, and it's almost beside the point when it comes to older children.

How should parents be punished for abandonment? The question isn't as easy as it sounds. Yes, ideally, they should be discouraged from abandonment by having services offered to them to help keep their children. But what if those services just aren't there, or can't help? You will eventually end up with some cases where parents forced to keep children will then abuse or neglect that child, and the child might end up in foster care anyway.

As some commenters have noted, people with money can abandon their children easily. They send them off to boarding school or residential treatment centers. The poor don't have that option.