Safe Havens for Pregnant Women

Society understands our current system is awful, but no one is protesting for a reform, or they’re aren’t trying hard enough. Child safety is the number one objective of the system, but it’s not working like it should. “In 2015, over 670,000 children spent time in U.S. foster care” (Foster Care). Of those 670,000 cases, more than half could be eliminated with a reform in the system. The focus should be on keeping families together, rather than taking them apart.

Hopefully soon more states are able to recognize the positives this program is doing for the mother and baby and make it more prevalent in todays penal system. Prison not only affects the mother, but the child as well. This article, Babies Behind Bars: An Evaluation of Prison Nurseries in American Female Prisons and Their Potential Constitutional Challenges proposes the question what if mothers were allowed to raise their babies in prison during their sentence. This would solve the problem of mothers loosing contact with their babies. This program only applies to infants and women who have a short non-violent record. It’s important not to keep the child in the prison when they start to realize what’s going on. This program is looking out for the child’s best interest. This allows the mother to get to raise her child so he/she doesn’t end up in foster care. Studies have shown that it is very important for a child to develop a very secure attachment early on in life and that’s exactly what this program does. This article mentions how the number of women prisoners are rising which is why this program is becoming more and more common. The article mentions that this program has a positive impact on the mother’s mental health and conduct. A mother is more likely to behave if she knows her child being able to stay with her is on the line. Her being able to raise, nurture, and care for her child overall helps her well being. It gives her a

In some ethical and legal respects a pregnant woman and her fetus can be considered separate. Both the woman and the fetus are ordinarily affected by the well-being of one another for as long as each of them live. The ethical and legal issues are challenged deeply in cases where the well-being of the fetus and the mother appear to be in conflict. Our society struggles with identifying cases where the pregnant woman’s interests and/or behaviors might put her fetus at risk. Criminal and/or civil commitments should be used to bar pregnant women from exposing their fetuses to risk.

Mother Behind Bars examines a lot of inadequate policies and procedures that these states have in place for federal and state correctional facilities. This report card bring up the issue on prenatal care, shackling, prison nurseries, and family based treatment as an alternative to incarceration however in this paper I will focus on the restraints on these pregnant inmates. New Jersey received a grade of D for shackling policies. Besides New Jersey thirty-seven other states obtain a D/F for their failure to comprehensively limit, or limit at all, the use of restraints on pregnant women transportation, labor, delivery, and postpartum recuperation (National Women’s Law Center, 2010). The use of restraints can compromise the health and safety of the women and the unborn child. Shackling pregnant women is dangerous and inhumane; women prisoners are still routinely shackled during pregnancy and childbirth. The reason these women are shackled is for safety and security, despite the fact that shackling pregnant women is degrading, unnecessary and a violation of human rights some state still condone this practice.

From existing research it is proven that children have mental, physical and development issues from growing up in foster homes. These young adolescents and children do not have the proper care in fostering homes as they would in an "all average American home". These kids are open to new traumatizing experiences not usually seen if one had a stable home, and these events causes permanent damage to one 's health state. Also with the simple fact that there are hundreds of children per foster home, all with different needs, still needing the basic necessities to thrive as a human without getting the proper funding calls for malnutrition children. Now these young kids are not just getting the proper care needed but they are also doing poorly in school and with daily challenges in life generally.

Many of these kids living in poor conditions will become a part of the foster care system. The foster care system is out of home temporary living for children who do not have a parent or guardian that can support them. Those kids will be moved into a safe living environment. Now the foster care system is great and the idea behind it is all positive, however, there are many problems that have arisen with the system. For example, kids get separated from siblings and other family members, there is a lack of support and training for caregivers and guardians in the foster care system, and foster children could be sent to several different homes never

The Safe Haven Laws for newborns is an alternative to leaving infants in unsafe places. Not all women who get pregnant are ready to raise a child and sometimes they see no options except to abandon the baby. Safe havens provide a new option; it allows a birth parent to leave a newborn infant (less than 72 hours old) with a medical worker in a hospital, a medical worker at a fire department or other emergency service organization, or peace officer at a law enforcement agency. If the infant is left with a person at one of these places, and has not been abused, the parent will face no legal consequences for making this choice. When a parent cannot care for an

While looking at the dangers and environment in a child’s home, advocates such as employees of the Department of Family and Protective Services of the State of Texas, have the moral obligation to take into consideration safety of children shelters and foster homes. Morally, advocates for the children should also take into consideration the psychological trauma that the child may or may not experience through being taken away from family and being placed, possibly multiple times, at new places away from everything they know.

“Number in foster care on September 30, 2015, of the Fy was...427,910” (“The AFCARS report”). The federal government spends $4.4 billion each year on the Foster care system for all youths so, as the youth's population in foster care is increasing. It is affecting the budget of a federal government so, that's why foster care became the social issue. The children in foster care were about equally split between Male (52%) and Female (48%). Most of the foster children that were in care September 2015 lived with nonrelative foster families (45%), followed by relative foster home (30%). The remaining children were placed in an institution (8%), a group home (6%), or a pre-adoptive home (4%). Some were on a trial home visit with their parents (5%). One percent were the runaway, and 1% were in supervised independent living. “Time in care (Months)...1-5 months...22%...95,999” (“The AFCARS report”). The more long children live in foster care, and the more federal government has to spend on foster care so — this can cause money to go over the budget of HHS and affect US economy. If parents or anyone else didn’t stop abusing the children, the day will come when all parents are in jail, and all children are in foster

As a result of this lack of safety, the child will be removed from the parents and placed into the care of someone who is deemed fit to raise the child. This is ultimately to “protect children from abuse and neglect.” (Senate website). However, even though a child is put into the foster care system to keep them safe, there are many situations that prove this to not be true. A young lady named Debbie spoke about how she was sexually abused in one of the several foster homes she was placed into. (Foster care stretched too far) If the agency worked properly, Debbie would have been placed in a safe environment, but instead, she was forced to endure terrible things that she did not deserve. She went into foster care because she was in an unsafe environment, and she should have felt safe in the comfort of her own home. Instead, she was left feeling as though she was nothing, as she describes to the reporter for article Foster care system stretched too

The Foster Care System was designed to create a safe place for children to escape abuse in their own homes, or for their parents to learn and apply better habits. Although this concept is accurate many times children leave a toxic home and enter a new one. Abuse is very prominent in foster care homes. Many parents try their best to care for the children under their care, but the abusive minority is large enough to raise serious concern. (Wexler, 2017). The homes where abusive is dominant which are designed to care for these children have become unsafe. A child should have the right to feel safe no matter the situation, sadly that is not the case. Statistics prove of the approximate 683,000

Foster care is supposed to support the children and find them a better place to be instead of being at their abusive or neglecting home; sometimes they are taken from their home without somewhere to put them due to the lack of foster parents. On the other hand, if they had stayed with their families they would already have a place to live and not have to be sleeping in makeshift homes which is one of the many reasons foster care should be replaced with family preservation. Not only does the foster system lack the foster parents, but they lack the money to support these kids that are coming in. The necessary amount of money to raise a child is an average of $713 per month, yet they were short with the reimbursement rate at about $522 each month (“Shortage of foster parents”). This absence of funds clearly conveys that the foster care system lacks the funding needed to support the number

Each state has its own period of time in which the law allows a parent to reclaim the baby. A parent who may not have known that the baby was given up through the SSBLinfant safe haven laws can go to the proper authorities and apply to reclaim the baby through that individual state’s process. In each case, to reclaim the baby, a social worker will meet with the parent or parents and evaluate the:

When states do adopted there next job would to be to inform the public about the safe haven law, and then the states would see number decrease of infant abetment in unsafe places. “Since 1999, 2,138 children have been relinquished nationwide under the Baby Safe Haven laws. Florida accounts for nearly 10 percent of that total, with 202 children left at safe havens around the state since 2000. Illinois has had 86 children left at safe havens since 2001. In the 12 years Arizona’s law has been in effect, 24 children have been left at safe havens.” (Hensley) With some states the law would become successful, but in some states it will only work for the ones that have an increase in mothers who are having baby kind like a “baby

Varone (2012) wrote that the factors, which help the courts determine residency are “ownership, leasing or occupancy of residential property, where the person sleeps, where the person is registered to vote, where the person’s cars are registered and the address on the person’s driver license, the receipt of mail, bills, and other items consistent with someone living in a certain location, and the payment of taxes and insurance” (p.592).