Safe Haven Baby Box opens at Gadsden fire station
Gadsden's first Safe Haven Baby Box is something even those responsible for it hope will never be used.
However, it's now there if needed — and the potentially tragic ramifications if it wasn't are sobering.
The box officially opened Thursday at Fire Station No. 3 on Garden Street in East Gadsden, six months after the City Council voted to accept an anonymous $18,000 donation from the Kids to Love Foundation of Madison for its installation.
It's the third such box in Alabama — the others are in Madison and Prattville — and Mayor Craig Ford announced that another one is planned for Fire Station 7 near Gadsden City High School, this time using Community Development Block Grant funds.
How it works: A mother who wants to surrender a baby can place it in the box, anonymously. There are no security cameras around.
Alabama's Safe Haven Law, passed last year by the Legislature (local legislators Mack Butler, Mark Gidley and Craig Lipscomb were co-sponsors), permits that without penalty at fire stations for children under 45 days old.
The box is ventilated and climate controlled to 74 degrees, according to Safe Haven's website.
Once an infant is inside, alarms are immediately triggered to 911, the fire department and other first responders. The average response time, according to Safe Haven, is 2 minutes.
Fire Chief Wil Reed said emergency personnel will assess the child at the scene, then the child will be transferred to a local hospital for further assessment, before the process starts to get the baby to its “forever home.”
It's the 207th Safe Haven box in the U.S. according to Monica Kelsey, the program's founder, who was present for the opening and said “we're just getting started.”
Kelsey spent eight years in the military and was a firefighter and medic in Indiana. She launched Safe Haven after learning, as an adult, that she was abandoned as a baby by a teenager who became pregnant after being raped.
“I stand on the front lines as one of those kids who was not lovingly, legally, safely and anonymously placed in a Safe Haven Baby Box,” she said. “I am honored to walk alongside these mothers and be their voice. There's no shame, no blame and no names if they want to surrender their baby at a fire station.”
The first box was installed in 2016, in Woodburn, Indiana. and the first child was placed in a box the following year.
Over the years, 43 babies have been placed in boxes across the U.S. and 140 have been handed off to authorities.
Kelsey said 2023 was a record year with 17 babies placed in boxes and 23 handed off, and there have been five babies placed in boxes this year, including two in Madison.
“Lives are being saved,” she said.
Ford credited his chief of staff, Brett Johnson, with presenting the idea to him. Johnson called the cause “near and dear” to his heart, and noted that the box isn't just available to people in Gadsden, but to those in Central and East Alabama.
“At least for the time being, it represents all the infants and mothers that will potentially need to use this, if and when the time comes,” he said.
Johnson said it's been fulfilling to watch everyone involved with the approval, the funding and the installation (by the city's building department) of the box recognize “the gravity of what we're dealing with.”
He noted that first responders often see society and people at their worst when they go on calls, but that instead of dealing with tragedy, “they may have the opportunity one day to retrieve a beautiful baby out of this box and help save its life.”
Reed added, “This box means a lot to me personally, having seen what a desperate mother has to resort to when she thinks she doesn't have any more options and can't get what she needs or get where she needs to be, but still wants to take care of this child.
“Now they can surrender a child instead of abandoning it in some unsavory ways,” he said. “We've seen where babies can be abandoned,” he said, “and seen what happens to those children.”
Ford said surrendering a baby is a difficult decision, and the box helps insure it can be done as safely as possible.
He said the boxes “have already saved precious lives in Alabama, and we want to do anything we can to make that process safer in Gadsden. Facilitating that responsibility is an honor and a blessing for our city."
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Saving lives is goal of Gadsden's first Safe Haven Baby Box
