A fire station in Spring is now the site of a box where parents can surrender their infants legally and anonymously.<\/p>\n
Greater Houston received its first Safe Haven Baby Box in April 2025. The box unveiled June 8 at Spring Fire Station 71, 646 E Louetta Rd., is the area\u2019s fifth. So far, all five have remained empty. But the dozens of infants in the U.S. who were safely surrendered in baby boxes, and the potential to prevent abandoned infant fatalities, makes it a worthwhile addition, according to fire officials.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it gives a chance for one more infant to live, I think it’s well worth the investment that’s been made,\u201d Spring Fire Department Chief Scott Seifert said.<\/p>\n
Nikolas Atkinson, the department\u2019s community risk reduction specialist, said the goal of the boxes is to ensure the child\u2019s wellbeing. People often feel shame when they abandon a baby, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy removing that element, I’m confident that we can make a noticeable impact reducing the infant fatality rate, at least locally,\u201d Atkinson said.<\/p>\n
Monica Kelsey founded the Safe Haven Baby Boxes nonprofit in 2015 and installed the first box the next year in Indiana.<\/p>\n
Indiana, Kelsey said, is the poster state for baby boxes in action. The state, which now has 150 boxes, was finding two to three abandoned dead infants per year before the boxes were introduced. In the 10 years since implementing the boxes, Indiana has had one deceased abandoned infant, and 39 babies legally surrendered through the boxes, she said.<\/p>\n
In Texas, Safe Haven locations include fire stations, EMS stations and hospitals. When the law was implemented in 1999, it required parents to hand the infant directly to an employee of the location. In 2023, the law added Safe Haven Baby Boxes as an acceptable option as well. In 2024, Abilene Fire Station 7 became the site of Texas\u2019 first baby box<\/a>.<\/p>\n Kelsey said the national hotline gets between two and three calls each day and has helped facilitate 197 direct handoffs to employees of Safe Haven locations since its founding and 79 baby box surrenders.<\/p>\n Despite having fewer boxes in Texas, Kelsey said three babies have been surrendered via the boxes in the state already this year. One story that sticks out to Kelsey since she started the nonprofit was a mother who drove seven and a half hours to surrender her baby in a box.<\/p>\n \u201cThe program is working,\u201d Kelsey said. \u201cIt’s not working fast enough, obviously; we’re still finding babies in dumpsters. But we only have 20 boxes in Texas so far and close to 200 counties in Texas. So, we’ve got a lot of work to still do<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fire station in Spring is now the site of a box where parents can surrender their infants…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-350348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}