Kentucky High School Students Bring Safe Haven Baby Box to Community

High school students in Rockcastle County, Kentucky, are working to fight infant abandonment by successfully bringing a Safe Haven Baby Box to their community.

The Rockcastle County High School students worked on an initiative and fundraising for several years to have a baby box installed at Rockcastle Regional Hospital, LEX 18 reported Saturday.

“The project began in 2022 when Brooke Abney, a member of the school’s Family, Career and Community Leaders of America program, learned about baby boxes and their life-saving potential,” according to the report. “The FCCLA program at Rockcastle High came together to work on the initiative through several years of research, presentations and fundraising efforts to make the project a reality.”

Baby boxes were created to deter parents from abandoning their newborns in unsafe conditions, potentially leaving them to die. Baby boxes are temperature-controlled incubators often built into exterior walls of fire stations, police stations, and hospitals, which can be accessed from inside. At-risk mothers can safely and legally place their newborns inside. Once the baby is inside the baby box, the outside door locks, and the mother has time to leave before an alarm goes off, alerting first responders or hospital staff to the child’s presence.

The baby is then quickly removed and sent to a hospital for a wellness check. From there, the infant is usually placed into state custody and is often adopted quickly.

The Rockcastle County baby box was dedicated in a ceremony on Friday.

“Our newest Kentucky location is due to very diligent high school students and we’re so grateful!” Safe Haven Baby Boxes said in a post on Facebook.

In Kentucky, newborns may be legally surrendered up to 30 days old to hospitals, police stations, fire stations, EMS providers, and baby boxes, according to the organization. 

Safe Haven Baby Boxes also has a confidential National Safe Haven Hotline, 1-866-99BABY1, that provides free counseling and information about safe surrenders, including face-to-face surrenders.

Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.