The most recent child abandoned -- a 14-year old girl from Council Bluffs left behind at Creighton Medical Center Tuesday -- is back in the care of her grandparents.

They are the same people who dropped her off 48-hours earlier.

"It appears this was a situation where the grandparent, for a lack of a better term, wanted to teach the child a lesson," says Todd Landry with Nebraska Health and Human Services. "They recognize that is the wrong thing to do. This is not a vehicle as a way to teach the child a lesson - shouldn't be used as a threat against a child certainly or any of those pieces."

All of the other children abandoned - 16 of them total -- are still wards of the state -- including 9 children from the same family.

The courts have the next move in all the cases.

So why aren't any of them home with family like the Iowa girl?

"Several different factors," says Nicole Brundo Goaley, Deputy Douglas County Attorney in the Juvenile Division, "There are children who continued to need mental care and are still in the hospital. Some of the situations include parents who have not put themselves in a position to be a parent. This one was different for many different reasons."

It's possible the children could be back with their caregivers at some point.

A young Omaha mother who abandoned her baby at a Bergan Mercy restroom last year was never charged even though it happened before the Safe Haven law made it legal.

Eventually, a judge allowed her custody of the infant.

Landry says, "Clearly this was never the intent of the legislature. It was for infants who were in immediate danger of being harmed. That hasn't been the case in a single instance we've seen yet. I think this is an indictment on the law."

Once a child is abandoned at a hospital, he or she goes into temporary protective custody for 48-hours to determine if the courts should get involved.

We haven't heard about that until the Iowa case, because officials say it was clear, right away, in all the other cases that the state needed to take custody.

The Iowa case was also different in that Child Protective Services from both states agreed, it was safe to send the teenager back home.