VIDEO/PHOTOS: For the first time, the state of Maine is installing a Safe Haven Baby Box. These boxes are designed to be a safe and anonymous option for parents to surrender their infant if they can no longer care for them. The door to the baby box will be installed in the entrance of the fire station. Once the baby is placed in the box, first responders will then have to come into a room to retrieve the baby.
“Once that door is closed, it’s going to the fire alarm,” Rumford Fire Chief Chris Reed said. Reed says once they are alerted, his team will send the baby to the hospital for evaluation and then the infant will be handed over to DHHS. “I think it’s a good fit for this area,” Reed said. “It takes a while to go from here to a maternity hospital.” Reed says Rumford Community Hospital did away with maternity care in 2023, leaving many families in the dark for early care services. “This is an absolute huge thing,” State Representative Rachel Henderson said.
The Safe Haven box is designed to allow families to surrender their child in privacy with no cameras around, though there is one inside the box itself. It’s a feature Henderson says is crucial. “To hand it over, face to face and look at the professional in the eye as you’re doing that is incredibly challenging and is really just another barrier for these mothers,” Henderson said.
In 2021, under Maine law, the state agreed to have Safe Haven Baby Boxes, but it was required that Maine DHHS adopt regulations. The baby cannot be over 31 days old, and the box must be temperature-controlled. “Last weekend was one of the deadliest weekends we have had in a very long time, where two babies, one of them found dead and one found clinging to life in a dumpster,” Safe Haven Baby Boxes Founder and CEO Monica Kelsey said. It’s those types of situations Kelsey is trying to prevent in communities like Maine.
“Having a baby box in Maine. There are no boxes around. The closest one is going to be in Pennsylvania, and so we know women will travel to these boxes,” Kelsey said. Once the baby box is installed, the chief says they will have to go through training before they can officially open it up to the community.
