{"id":205375,"date":"2026-03-25T12:06:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T12:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/205375\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T12:06:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T12:06:17","slug":"jacksonville-councilman-wants-to-add-safe-haven-baby-boxes-in-each-city-council-district","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/205375\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacksonville councilman wants to add Safe Haven baby boxes in each City Council district"},"content":{"rendered":"

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 After introducing legislation this month, Jacksonville City Councilman Rory Diamond is expected to share more information Wednesday about an effort to bring Safe Haven baby boxes to one fire station in each city council district.<\/p>\n

Under Florida\u2019s Safe Haven Act<\/a>, a parent can legally and anonymously surrender a baby who is no older than 30 days, at any fire station, hospital or emergency services station, no questions asked.<\/p>\n

Safe Haven boxes allow the parent to leave the infant in a temperature-controlled, secure device that immediately alerts first responders so the child receives prompt care.<\/p>\n

There are more than 420 of those boxes in the country. The first in Florida was installed in Ocala in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nothing more precious than a little baby, than life, and with these baby boxes we are protecting these innocent little lives and giving their parents who, for whatever reason, chose to surrender them, a safe way to do so,\u201d Diamond said.<\/p>\n

Jacksonville City Council Bill 2026-186 would appropriate funds to place 14 of these boxes at designated locations.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one is going to ask any questions,\u201d Diamond said. \u201cIt is a very safe and anonymous way to protect these little angels.\u201d<\/p>\n

RELATED: Safe Haven for Newborns reaches milestone of 402 babies saved in Florida since its opening<\/a><\/p>\n

He said the installation of the boxes would cost the city about $600,000, and then $5,000 a year for maintenance and upgrades to the boxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to save the lives of little, precious newborns. It is an awful thing if a mother, for whatever reason, cannot keep her baby. But if she can\u2019t, we want to have a really safe, easy way for her to give that baby up to protect the baby\u2019s life,\u201d Diamond said.<\/p>\n

Eventually, the babies can be adopted.<\/p>\n

Diamond\u2019s bill was filed on March 10 and is scheduled for committee discussion the first week of April, with a final City Council vote set for April 14.<\/p>\n

Diamond said if the proposal is approved, he hopes to have the boxes installed and operational by this summer.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 After introducing legislation this month, Jacksonville City Councilman Rory Diamond is expected to share more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[502,571,116,4040,118,117,11387,99,18571,87372],"class_list":["post-205375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-community","tag-health","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-city-council","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-parenting","tag-politics","tag-rory-diamond","tag-safe-haven"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}