Safe Haven Baby Box will be installed at new Cole County EMS building
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)
A Safe Haven Baby Box will go into the new Cole County EMS Headquarters in Downtown Jefferson City.
The Jefferson City Public Safety Committee began discussing the implementation of a box after a baby was left in a Walmart bag behind a shed in Maries County in June.
Last week, Cole County EMS Chief Eric Hoy said that the Indiana-based nonprofit Safe Haven Baby Boxes began conversations with the committee over the summer. The group installs devices for people to safely and anonymously surrender infants.
"I believe that that was the inspiring point," Hoy said. "The Safe Haven Baby Box task force has been working behind the scenes to bring this, you know, tool to our community for several months. They approached the Public Safety Committee in July."
The committee spent the following months consulting with their public safety agencies and seeking additional information.
"The big piece is that we wanted to make sure that we were finding the most advantageous place to place that resource in our community," Hoy said. "Ultimately, that led to, of course, our new facility here in downtown."
The box will be installed on the wall of the building and will alert medical personnel if a baby is placed inside. This ensures immediate care of the surrendered infant.
"So the county commission has signed off on being the authority that kind of places that into one of our buildings," Hoy said. "And then the pregnancy help center has also approached us with funding for that project. So we're really at a point now where we are ready to move forward with procurement and really formalizing some of those relationships with the involved parties."
Jefferson City will be the second location to install a Safe Haven Baby Box in Missouri, following Mehlville in August of last year. The first baby surrendered to that box came six months after its installment.
The city hopes to get the project "pushed through" in the first quarter of 2025.
