Safe Surrender Babies- Where do they go???

Safe Surrender laws were created based on somebodies good idea to save babies - not research that a mother so desperate who would dump a baby in a dumpster would actually use that avenue, or that they even required or wanted anonymity. Then after one state did it, the rest rushed to create their own versions. Each state has different laws - some neglect to include the requirement to check putative fathers registries, others the missing child databases, some require some info, others require other info, some give matching armbands - none of them appear to have talked to each other and come up with anything that looked at all aspects. The result - babies are still being dumped in dumpsters and babies are still being surrendered for adoption - nothing has changed except the babe may never know their heritage. No mother has ever been denied the right to surrender her babe to an appropriate person without fear of prosecution of abandonment if there is no abuse of the babe. Safe Surrender laws all require there is no abuse - if there is abuse of the babe they will prosecute. If that law had been in effect when I was born I would have been classified as a Safe Surrender, because my mother did what every other mother had the opportunity to do then if they did not want to use an agency or lawyer, and now, surrender me to the state right from the hospital. It happens today, and either the state or the adoption agency is called by the hospital. They just needed to educate the public that if you aren't capable of raising your baby then call X, Y, or Z. They didn't need to add new laws. Kind regards,Dickons

That's what happens here too. There are some strict rules for getting in, such as only having a certain number of children. It also costs more than foster care but a lot less than adopting from an agency's domestic info program. It's based on the adopting family's income.

In our state Save Surrender babies are VERY rare. My CW said she is only aware of 1 true safe surrender in her 7 years at DFS and that baby was special needs.

All interesting points. I think that I can't go so far as to say if a mother abandons her baby- she doesn't deserve a chance to get them back- but then that is why they have a window of time where they can change their minds. I think that someone who is mentally ill and isn't thinking rationally may still be compelled to do something atrocious, as what happened in this case. I agree with a pp that her age doesn't mean she should be able to be more rational than a younger person- but to me if you are 30 and don't know you have other options- such as adoption or safe surrender- something else is going on there. Either way, it is very sad. I am going to ask my CW if those babies go into foster care here or go to private agencies. There are so many foster homes who want to adopt, especially younger infants- it seems to make sense that they could go that route. When we had our training, we were told that it was extremely rare for "adopt only" homes to get infants, and that concurrent planning was the only way to go since we don't even have "legal risk" in our state. But I am wondering now, if we were to get to adopt our current placement- I know I want to be done fostering, but it would be nice to stay open to adoption. Even if it took a few years to get an adoptive placement that was a younger infant or child. I would love to be on that list- you know? Otherwise we would need to go private.

To the OP: I am maybe 5 minutes away from this department store where this horrible crime took place. I just thought it was crazy how close we must live to each other. Then I got to looking at your signature and I completed my MAPP classes the same time as you! But my class was just us and one other person. Anyways, in regards to your question: ad others have stated, these babies go into foster care and are placed with a foster/adoptive family. I believe they have to wait 90 days for a parent or family to come forward and then they can start the adoption process. Going into foster/adoption this was the situation I hoped our placement would be. Unfortunately, a lot of "safe haven" babies are left on hospitals and there are no major hospitals in my county. They are all in the next county over.

I wanted to add that in my area (apparently close to your area) in order to have a safe haven baby placed in your home, you still must be a foster and adoptive home, not just an adoptive home. This is because if the baby comes home to you right from the hospital, you will be fostering the child until it becomes available for adoption. During our MAPP classes, our R&C worker shared a story of a family who was extremely upset that their current foster child had gotten reunified, they had come into the DCBS office upset and as soon as they left, the R@C worker had gotten a call needing a family for an infant who was abandoned someplace. He contacted that same family who had just had a child reunified. They accepted the placement of the newborn and was able to adopt but the process still took about a year. So they still were technically foster parents to that baby for a year.

Our daughter came to us as a safe haven baby, we picked her up from the hospital when she was 2 days old, perfectly healthy beautiful baby! Her birthmom relinquished her rights when she was about 3 months old, and we did have some last minute issues before finalization when her family found out through the newspaper posting on the birthfather, but we were able to finalize her adoption when she was 8 months old! So thankful that her birthmom chose to take her to a safe place, we are so blessed to have our lil princess!!!!

My friend's brother adopted a safe haven baby here. The cool thing is that he was adopted from fc....the now little girl is a beautiful, thriving kid. The story made local news here. I guess without knowing the reasons women use safe haven (how could this ever be studied?), it is hard to say what would happen without it. My guess though is at least sometimes it saves babies from being left to die so it is strange to me when people don't support it. The stressors women face from a secret pg are probably similar so to me hands down it is obviously a better alternative than the horrific stories we hear.

SS is a PR spin made to convince a higher percentage of women to relinquish their unwanted babies. As Dickons pointed out, it only slightly expands options that were always available. But if it gets babies into good homes and out of a crappy life, it is worth it. If you tell a pregnant woman she can drop her baby off with the label "surrender," it sounds much better than having to look someone in the eyes and admit she can't care for her baby. They make it out to be an anonymous alternative to giving a baby up for adoption. What bm does not realize is that she will probably (depending on the area) still have to claim the child and deal with CPS, the birth father, and all the people she wanted to hide the baby from in the first place. Because Safe Surrender sounds so much more cozy than state relinquishment, it does work. It convinces that one woman who would otherwise not choose to put her baby up for adoption. And when it works as it should, no one ever has to know.

Of course someone who is 30 should know that there are other options than killing your baby. I think even a 15-year old would know that there are other options, like adoption. But that doesn't really matter because the decision to hide the pregnancy and kill the baby isn't a rational decision based on any rational thought. Just the hormonal changes that occur in pregnancy and after birth is enough to throw someone off their rocker. Women are the most likely to be hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital in the weeks after childbirth. Just the fact that a woman manages to repress the knowledge that she's pregnant, which is usually the case in these cases, is enough to see that something has gone very wrong in the woman's brain. We are no more responsible or at fault for something going wrong in our brains than we are for something going wrong in our kidneys. It's not voluntary or willful and neither are the symptoms of the malfunction. When something malfunctions in the brain the symptoms are behavior, mood and thought related but that's no less an illness and no more voluntary than weight loss and nausea from kidney disease. Of course there are people that are just self centered and don't care about hurting others if it benefits them. But hiding a pregnancy and killing your newborn doesn't sound like something like that. The rational thing for someone self centered who doesn't want to deal with the problem of a baby would do is have an abortion or just walk away and leave the baby in the hospital. That would be much more beneficial to such a person if she's rational. A rationally thinking person would realize that the risk of getting caught after killing a baby is pretty big and understand that there are easier and less risky options. The 30-year old woman didn't even make much effort to hide her crime - another sign of disordered thinking.

Our safe haven babes go to foster homes. With our new house bill, there is huge burden to find family now. I agree with what one pp said, these people who kill their babies are not acting in their right mind and would be less likely to go to safe haven option. I know in my state, they'd try to find family but this is yet another case where the woman yields all the power and birth fathers are left in the cold. I only just realized a few months ago that Chubbs' bio mom did act in love for him. She could have had him on the street, abandoned or killed him, but she didn't, she went to the hospital, knowing she risked arrest for a warrant, and left him there knowing that he would be taken care of and placed in a home. When I realized that I brought tears to my eyes. I can now honestly tell him that his birth mom cared about him but just couldn't parent him. She probably assumed that he'd end up with sibs. Sadly, even for babes, not all of the foster families that take the infants are good. The nurses told me that they were so relieved to see him going to a good home. I asked how they knew I was a good foster parent and the nurse said "the tears in your eyes when you picked him up." Or something like that, I'd had very little sleep at that point, lol.

I'm in NJ & have a healthy safe haven baby girl who is now 6 months old (she came home from the hospital to us @ 4 days old). After completion of our PRIDE training I was Informed by our house resource worker that the safe haven "list" was separate from fost/adopt & by completing a simple questionnaire we got on the "list". She is the 7th child we have fostered & her adoption s/b complete within the next 4-6wks. We have fostered for 3 yrs & I would contact the adoption unit (who handle safe haven babies) 1-2 times/year just to provide updates & ensure we where still on the "list". Because of the emotional turmoil & crappy system which is clealry not n the best interest of the child (@least not here) we had decided to stop fostering to just focus on our foster son who we want so badly to adopt. Safe haven babies are so rare in NJ I never imagined we would get that call. When you do it's truly a gift from God & I thank my baby girls bio mom every day for giving me the greatest gift ever. These tragic deaths are senseless with this law in effect-but I also think that people need to be better informed that the law even exists...( and it needs to be followed-not "allowing" someone to do a safe haven seems a bit wacky to me....)

Congrats on the baby! Safe Haven works the same way in my area. The county maintains a list of foster families who would like a 'safe surrender' child. When a child becomes available, they choose the person at the top of the list and then work their way down. Our county gets a few safe surrender babies each year. The baby has to be less than 3 days old-although older babies have been 'surrendered'. The baby gave be given to a hospital, police officer, firefighter/emt, or any 'responsible adult'-who is then supposed to contact child welfare. The law doesn't really protect parents of older babies from prosecution. And they do search to make sure the baby is truly abandoned and no one is looking for her/him. The only ones that make the news around here are the ones left in a place that is not designated a 'safe surrender'. Despite the Safe Haven option, many new babies are left to die (or killed at birth). I don't know how many women know about Safe Surrender. Many (I think) heard of it but don't know how it works-or don't trust it. Maybe they worry that they will be arrested anyway-or forced to identify themselves. I'm sure it's fear and general mistrust of the process that keeps women from dropping off their babies.

To date, 33 babies have been safely surrendered in my County since they began tracking those babies in 2006. Three infants have already been safely surrendered this year, 2013.

Here safe haven babies are not placed in foster care. They are placed through private adoptions. We had a SH baby born here when we were getting our license so I asked at training and was told they were placed in foster care. I don't know if I was told incorrectly at that time or if things have changed.