Stephanie Etheridge, juvenile court manager at the Administrative Office of the Courts, told the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth that the state’s Safe Baby Court initiative is expanding and producing measurable improvements in reunification and family contact.

"We currently have 26 safe baby courts across the state. We are in the process of adding 6 more," Etheridge said, describing the model as a community‑based, non‑adversarial approach focused on infants and toddlers and on prevention work in addition to foster‑care cases. She said Tennessee adopted the national 0 to 3 model and kept its core components while adding a prevention emphasis.

The program relies on interdisciplinary teams — judicial and child‑welfare leadership, local coordinators, peer recovery specialists and community partners — to speed services, increase frequent, quality family time and reduce recidivism. Etheridge said Safe Baby Court teams prioritize "keeping the baby at the forefront of the decision making process" and that family time should not be used punitively "unless there is an identified and specific risk of harm."

Etheridge presented state data showing what she described as improvement in several measures since the program began in 2016. As reported at the meeting, Safe Baby Courts have served roughly 754 cases representing about 1,315 children (transcript figures), and cases that closed in the program included 556 that achieved permanency, representing 937 children. Etheridge said average time to reunification now sits near the 12‑month mark and that the overall average time to permanency across outcomes is about 14.8 months.

Family contact and service use have trended upward, Etheridge said: families in Safe Baby Courts averaged 10.6 visits per month in 2023 and 12.9 in 2024; services per family rose from about 10.7 in 2023 to 12.5 in 2024. She noted low absolute counts in the recidivism metric presented: for example, reentry to foster care within six months was reported as two children in early years and five children (two cases) in 2024 — figures she framed as small absolute counts.

On funding and administration, Etheridge said Safe Baby Courts are financed through state appropriation. "All of our state baby courts are funded, 100% by state appropriation," she said, and described an interagency arrangement in which the Department of Children’s Services executes agreements with the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, which then issues contracts to counties or, in some places, to nonprofit administrators.

Etheridge and participants also highlighted local examples — volunteer diaper drives, childcare centers offering evening space for family time, and peer specialists serving as coordinators — to illustrate how community partners are used to sustain services after court involvement ends.

The Commission discussion ended with an offer from Etheridge to help courts that are interested in establishing Safe Baby Courts and a reminder that judges must commit to local leadership for a site to be added.

The meeting presentation closed with a graduation video and live testimonials from program participants, which Etheridge described as evidence of the model’s impact; she invited any county staff interested in a Safe Baby Court to contact her or the DCS contacts published in the juvenile court directory.