Although reported incidents of infant abandonment are rare, they’re not unknown—and one Calgary charity is working towards making that an option no parent ever has to make.
Opened on April 15, Hope’s Cradle from Gems for Gems, hosted at the Children’s Cottage Society’s children and family services building in Montgomery, is Calgary’s first infant surrender site.
Located in a vestibule near the main entrance to their location at 1804 Home Road NW, it allows parents to surrender their infant child into a secured location monitored 24 hours a day, anonymously and legally.
“Any parents looking to be able to seek the anonymous option of hubs cradle will walk up to the cradle open the door there’s a package inside that gives them a lot of mental health resources, as well as a guided letter to be able to send back with their final thoughts for their baby if they wish,” said Jordan Guildford, CEO and Founder of Gems for Gems.
“But the baby will be collected within minutes of them closing the door. The alarm system goes off 24/7, so it’s always monitored. There’s a camera facing the bassinet inside of the cradle, and that’s really to ensure that people who are monitoring the camera can see if the baby is in any sort of immediate distress.”
The door alarm also alerts 911, which then dispatches EMS to collect the infant to be taken to a local hospital for care. There, the child is given a complete checkup before the child enters the care of Child Protective Services.
So long as the child is free from intentional abuse or harm, there are no legal consequences for surrendering the child.
Among the mental health support given to parents is psychological support provided through Gems for Gems by Nicole Bullock, a Registered Psychologist.
“Her whole job is to be able to triage the woman so that she doesn’t have to be re-victimized before seeking resources. We also are so happy to be partnering with the Children’s Cottage at this specific location, because they also will provide support for the mothers and without any discrimination,” said Guildford.
“That’s something that I think is so important because it’s very easy to villainize these women, but we don’t see it that way. What we want the community to understand is that we can’t possibly understand what they’re going through.”
Provides choices in impossible circumstances
Guildford said that Hope’s Cradle gives parents a choice between abandoning their baby and allowing their child to live—and that the location at Children’s Cottage Society will do just that.
“We’re grounded in the fact that we are competing with a dumpster, with an alley, with ditches. For us, it doesn’t matter if it’s two minutes or if it’s 10 minutes, as long as that baby’s life is saved and it’s protected. That’s what matters to us,” she said.
Parents can also take back their infant within 30 days if they change their minds, said Guildford.
“The beautiful thing about Hope’s Cradle is that it protects both sides of the equation. So yes, the baby’s life is protected, but the mother’s life is protected as well,” she said.
“Hope’s Cradle means that mother has not committed a crime. Which means that when she’s coming back, she’s not coming back from behind the eight ball. She is coming back fully entitled to be able to plead her case, and show that whatever danger her baby was facing is now at a different level, and she can reclaim regain her custody as appropriate.”
Guildford said that there are many different situations that parents could be in that would result in the more temporary use of the cradles.
“Right now, we have designed these cradles to address the abandonment issues that are resulting in the deaths of the babies. But we really hope to see these cradles used in a much broader scope as well. I would love that if someone knows their baby’s in danger, they know that they can place their baby in Hope’s Cradle and they have 30 days to be able to reclaim it,” she said.
“There’s many situations like trafficking, like abuse, and so many others that this would be a game changer for people. Too many times we hear of babies being murdered by someone’s ex or someone’s new boyfriend, or any of those types of situations, and it could be prevented if they know there’s a safe place for that baby to go even if it’s for a short term.”
Baby Eve’s short life leaves a lasting impression, and lasting change
Lisa Garrisen, Director of Programs for Children’s Cottage Society, said the 2017 death of an abandoned infant in Calgary, later named Eve, left a lasting impression on the organization about how they could prevent future tragedies.
“We started having conversations then about what we might want to do. We knew in our minds that we were building this building here in Montgomery, and so we thought maybe we could bring those two things together,” Garrisen said.
“At Children’s Cottage, we really believe in keeping families together, but we also know that there are circumstances that are dangerous, that are unsupported, where parents are in really scary circumstances and they are unable to look after their infant. If they don’t have natural supports, if they don’t have resources, if they don’t have another solution, we wanted to give them an option that ensured the safety of the infant.”
Garrisen said that they also wanted to protect the anonymity of parents who make that choice to surrender rather than abandon their infant.
“It’s going to be the difference of life and death for an infant. It also means that a parent can make a safer choice ensuring their future as well. So I mean, in our minds, it was like why wouldn’t we do this?” She said.
Dave Sweet, a former Calgary Police Service Homicide Detective and now Board Chair for Gems for Gems, said that it was an important day for Calgary because it changes the options available for parents.
“The option prior was to unsafely surrender a child, which we saw the results of that tragically play out over the last 15 years of my career on several different occasions,” he said.
Sweet was one of the detectives who investigated as part of a Calgary Police Service team the death of Baby Eve.
“It was from that experience, and several prior to that, that the idea of Hope’s Cradle program here in Calgary was born. The most important thing to take away from Baby Eve’s story is this: You’re never too small to make a difference in this world, and the opportunities that we have in our community to make a difference are all around us. We just have to find them,” he said.
“Baby Eve was alive for a very, very short period of time, likely only hours, but her life and her impact has been enormous.”
Statistics show dramatic decreases in infant homicides in other jurisdictions
Although the statistics related to infant homicide is low in Canada—there were just two in 2022, two in 2021, and six in 2021—Sweet said that the statistics represented likely just the tip of the iceberg in terms of lives lost.
“One of the things that I believe happens in a lot of these cases is women who are making the decision that maybe this is an unwanted pregnancy, but they’re too far along. They don’t have a lot of options, and abandonment seems to be one that is being contemplated,” he said.
“You will also see the pregnancy being concealed. There’ll be no attempts to go to a doctor to receive any kind of care prior to the birth of the child, and so these infants are are being born and nobody even knew they existed in the first place.”
He said that the chances of finding one of those infants is almost by fluke.
“It’s the tip of the iceberg to what I think is a larger problem. I do think that cradles, if they’re utilized in this way, they may start to expose a little bit more of the actual problem that we may have within our community that we don’t even know we have,” Sweet said.
Canada, compared to other nations, has very few infant surrender sites. The United States, by comparison, has laws and sites across all 50 states that allow for infant surrender.
According to research that examined the infant mortality from homicide from 2008–2017, safe surrender laws decreased the rate of first-day homicides—that being infants being subject to homicide on their first day of life—from 222 per 100,000 person hours prior to the enaction of those laws in 1999, to just 74 during the study’s period.
The study found a significant difference between homicide rates on that first day, being largely associated with the concealing and abandonment of infants, versus child abuse and neglect after the first day.
Sweet said that a goal for Gems for Gems was to have cradles in all four quadrants of the city, and eventually around the country.
“It does require a host agency, a group that’s going to be as dedicated and caring to the concept of the cradle as we have here at Children’s Cottage to take this on. But I know that those organizations are out there,” he said.
