A Tennessee Safe Haven Baby Box in Knoxville was used for the first time Saturday. A healthy newborn was placed into the box Saturday, after months of the box being available 24/7, in a unique situation. The baby placed in the box was just about 30 minutes old!
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The Knoxville Fire Department provided the following statement on the use of Station 17’s baby box Saturday,
Last night at 12:19 AM, the Knoxville Fire Department Station 17 (located at 4804 Western Ave) received a “Baby Box Alert” for their Baby Box in the station. The station crew of three immediately went to the box and found a healthy baby boy inside. The child was not injured and was quickly removed from the box for further evaluation. The station crew called for an ambulance to transport the child to the hospital.
The Safe Haven Baby Box was installed in Knoxville on February 17th with funding assistance from the Craig Foundation. This Baby Box is the first in Tennessee, and this was the first time it was used since its installation. This resource is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at Fire Station 17 and is entirely anonymous for any parent who needs a place to turn in a time of crisis.
The City of Knoxville is home to the state’s first Safe Haven Baby Box in Tennessee. This community resource is at KFD’s station #17 on Western Ave. Firefighters demonstrate how this will work and explain how this tool can help them save more lives.
In 2001 a state law legislated that mothers or parents could surrender their babies to a designated safe place without fear of any penalization or prosecution. The only caveats of the law were that the baby would need to be surrendered within the first two weeks of the newborn’s life and the baby would need to be healthy and unharmed. Though it wasn’t until August of 2022 that a grant from the East Tennessee Foundation’s Craig Fund helped to finance the safe box which would allow parents to come forward and surrender a baby anonymously without alerting the fire station. In this specific situation, the newborn baby boy was surrendered unharmed and the fire department was able to call an ambulance and get the new baby to a hospital before it was turned over to the state’s child services.
