24/7 A Safe Haven for Newborns Helpline

Everyone is helped. All calls are confidential.

Primary Referral Resources: Healthy Start, Healthy Families, Clinics, Hospitals, Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Counselors,
Homes/Shelters for pregnant girls/women and mothers.

Calls are received from all regions of the state – The callers have been as young as 13 years-old and as old as 41-years-old. The calls range from:
A pregnant 14-year-old girl and her mother calling seeking help.

• A 32 year old pregnant woman living in her car for three (3) weeks – She was shunned by her family.
• A 17-year-old high school student who was hiding her pregnancy and did not know what to do.
• A 19-year-old college student who was pregnant, no medical care and was due to give birth any day. We arranged for her to receive immediate medical attention then coordinated the “Safe Haven” process with the Hospital and offered her to receive counseling. She had a healthy baby girl. The baby was placed for adoption in a loving home. The young girl wrote us a letter thanking us, wanting us to tell the hospital how appreciative she was for their compassion, and not judging her.
• A 16-year-old girl who was pregnant but afraid to tell her mother because her brother who was younger than her had just fathered a child. She believed her mother would be further devastated by her situation and would reject her.
• A 19-year-old mother with her 5-month-old baby who was kicked out of her house, with no money, food or shelter – We arranged for her to stay at a motel in the Tampa area and paid the motel clerk to get her and her baby food. We found and she agreed to go to the Covenant House in Orlando who provides life skills and career assistance programs.
• Assisting mothers with the entire process of relinquishing their newborn to a hospital, Fire/EMS station and in some cases actually taking the child to one of these facilities ourselves.
• And much more…….

And this special story of one of the many Safe Haven babies saved:

The Safe Haven referral helpline received a call from a young mother with her two (2) day old baby girl –she wanted to know more about the “Safe Haven” program and needed help. She chose to leave her baby at a Fire Rescue “Safe Haven” Station. The helpline assisted her; the baby was then transported to a nearby hospital. The hospital then contacted an Adoption Agency for the baby to be placed with a family waiting to adopt.

Two (2) days later the biological mother called our helpline to thank them for their help but more importantly, she had two letters to give to the adoptive parents’ one for them and one for the baby when she grows up. We met the mother at a church, the meeting was very emotional and at the end, she gave us the two (2) letters. The main message to the child who is now called Gloria Hope was that: “You did not think I loved you because I gave you up but that is exactly why I did – I wanted you to have a future that I could not provide”. The adoptive parents chose to keep in touch with us and we talk to them and little Gloria Hope regularly. She is a beautiful child inside and out.