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Last updated on Monday, June 13, 2016
(UNDATED) - There are two baby boxes installed at fire stations in Indiana and plans to install more in the central part of the state.
The boxes would be built into the walls of fire stations, police stations, hospitals or other qualified nonprofits such as domestic violence shelters.
The director of the Indiana Department of Children Services has warned an organization that installed two baby boxes at firehouses where mothers can drop off unwanted newborns anonymously to remove them.
The baby box is about the size of an incubator and is installed in the walls of buildings - kind of like the boxes at the bank drive through that you put your money in to give to the teller.
According to letters obtained by The Associated Press, DCS Director Mary Beth Bonaventura wrote the Safe Haven Baby Box organization saying she questions the safety of the boxes. She also said the agency would have to investigate the use of such a box as a case of child abandonment.
Bonaventura also recommended Safe Haven Baby Box not install any more boxes. Founder Monica Kelsey says the group doesn't plan to stop.
Kelsey got the idea for the boxes because she was abandoned at a hospital as a child. She says as soon as someone opens the heated boxes it triggers a 911 call.
"Before the child is even placed in the box we're initiating fire and medical to come to this location," Kelsey says.
Kelsey said she plans to install two more baby boxes in Indiana and another in Ohio. Her attorney, James Bopp, said the two will be installed in urban areas in central Indiana.
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