County launches Safe Baby Court
“I don’t think there is a better investment of public dollars … than to invest in the youngest citizens in our community.”
— HAMILTON COUNTY MAYOR WESTON WAMP
Dozens of officials and community members gathered Tuesday in front of the Hamilton County Juvenile Court to celebrate the launch of Safe Baby Court, which aims to help children in the welfare system find their forever home.
Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp, Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly, Rep. Patsy Hazlewood, R-Signal Mountain, and Hamilton County Juvenile Court Judge Rob Philyaw were among those stressing the importance of focusing community efforts on improving long-term outcomes for children who are separated from their parents.
As someone who is responsible for the brain development of quite a few of his own children (Wamp and his wife, Shelby, have five), the issue is particularly important to him, Wamp said. If the county wants to see improvements from jail stabilization to decreases in crime in the coming decades, it must invest in the future of children, he said.
“I don’t think there is a better investment of public dollars … than to invest in the youngest citizens in our community,” Wamp said.
Hamilton County has joined a dozen other counties across Tennessee in the creation of a Safe Baby Court.
It is a specialized program for infants and toddlers from birth to 3 years old. The court is designed for willing parents who are committed to helping their child land in a safe, secure home whether it be back with them or a different guardian.
The parents work with a team of professionals including case managers, welfare workers, developmental specialists and attorneys to help them solve problems.
The state of Tennessee can take legal and physical custody over a person’s child for three main reasons, which include neglect or abuse, delinquency or when a child is deemed unruly, according to the Department of Children’s Services. Children are considered unruly when they are in need of treatment or rehab, habitually disobedient, truant from school or a runaway.
Parents who lose a newborn child or an infant are often suffering from drug addiction, mental health issues or negative environmental factors, said Lawrence Ward, who oversees Hamilton County Safe Baby Court.
There were 9,227 children in foster care in Tennessee as of 2021, which is the most recent year for which data is
available, according to the federal Children’s Bureau.
Those children spent an average of 11.4 months in state custody.
About 23% of the children in state custody were three years old or younger, the data shows.
In 2017, Tennessee passed legislation to create the “Zero to Three Court
Initiative” to improve the outcome for these infants and toddlers through a community engagement, accountability approach. It is meant to expedite services for uncertain young children in the judicial system.
“This could be the most important policy innovation in the past 10 years,” Kelly said.
There have been about 1,000 children statewide involved in the program since its creation, which represents about 600 families.
About 500 of those children were reunited with their parents, and only two have had to come back into state custody.
While Hamilton County Juvenile Court was established in 1945, Philyaw said the court system has been seeing situations recently that have never been tackled before in the past 80 years.
Many people who have infants are not done having babies, so the program will go on to help children who haven’t even been born yet, Philyaw said.
“We believe that for our children to thrive, it’s a community responsibility to remove barriers,” Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Justin Robertson said.