FEBRUARY 4, 2025
As the 2025 legislation session is ramping up, scores of bills are waiting to be introduced to different committees with hopes of potentially becoming law—such as House Bill 1099, which passed its second reading in the House Family, Children and Human Affairs Committee last week.
HB 1099 would raise the maximum age an infant can be safely given up to 60 days and change the definitions of “abandoned child” and “foster youth.”
Indiana has a Safe Haven law that allows a person the ability to anonymously give an infant up without being arrested if there’s no sign of intentional abuse and no information required. With this law, the infant has to be 30 days of age or younger.
That was a law that passed in 2000, and in 2016, Indiana started installing “baby boxes” in certain locations, such as fire stations and hospitals. The baby boxes can be used to safely surrender an infant. The latest baby box was installed in Mishawaka, making 141 locations in Indiana with a baby box and 300 in the nation.
In an interview with TheStatehouseFile.com, bill author Rep. Dale Devon, R-Granger, said what prompted him to write a bill about baby boxes was serving on a summer study committee reviewing child fatalities.
“Every time a child dies in Indiana, each county has a fatal review team, and it’s made up of different people, from prosecutors to law enforcement, public defenders and doctors, and we look at the process of what happened to that child and why it died,” he said.
“And so every year, on average, it’s sad to say, but it’s about 60 children die every year in Indiana from neglect and abuse. Over 300 die, but a lot of times, it’s car accidents, drowning or a disease, but neglect and abuse is one thing that as chairman of the family and children’s committee, we have to review those reports that come back and to try to determine what can we do in the state.”
DeVon challenged the Department of Child Services to do a deeper dive to see the commonalities from year to year.
With about seven years of reporting, DCS said 11% of kids that pass away every year die under the age of 2 months.
“So a few years ago, we created these safe haven boxes that if a mother or a father wanted to surrender their child without any penalty, they could put this child in a safe haven box,” DeVon said. “And so we increased the age from 30 days to 60 days to make it less harmful for a mother to surrender her child if she didn’t feel she could be worthy of a mother.”
The initiative is a DCS recommendation, focusing on proactive measures to save children’s lives by placing them in safe environments early.
FOOTNOTE DeMarion Newell is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
