Arizona child-safety agency provides sleep boxes for infants

Parents involved with Arizona’s child protection agency are being provided commercially produced boxes intended for use as portable beds to provide infants with safe places to sleep and avoid preventable-sleep-related deaths.

Prevention Administrator Sue Smith says the Department of Child Safety has started giving boxes to families after they complete training on safe sleeping practices for infants.

Smith says safe practices include having the infant sleep in the same room with parents but not in the same bed.

The department says unsafe sleep environments claimed the lives of 74 Arizona infants in 2015 and that 90 percent of those sleep-related deaths were deemed preventable.

New Jersey also has a similar sleeping-box program, and Arizona officials say the idea is based on Finland’s longstanding practice of providing sleeping boxes for babies.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press.