Crisis Nursery to Open in Pittsburgh

To coincide with National Child Abuse Awareness Month, local nonprofit Jeremiah’s Place today announced the opening of Pittsburgh’s first ever crisis nursery in Larimer. The nursery will provide emergency care for children whose parents are experiencing a crisis or emergency and the program’s staff say they’re already receiving calls from families.

“Very often, parents don’t have good childcare choices in an emergency,” said Executive Director LouAnn Ross. “We know that there are times parents refuse medical treatment because they don’t have childcare. There’s about a million examples like that of what the need looks like.”

Jeremiah’s Place was founded by doctors Lynne Williams, Tammy Murduch, and child advocate Eileen Sharbaugh. The nursery is designed to help parents who are temporarily unable to care for their children due to a health emergency, family conflict, or other crisis.

“Sometimes it gets so complicated when parents are trying to care for a child and they’re dealing with their own issues,” Sharbaugh said.

Williams became interested in bringing a crisis nursery to Pittsburgh after seeing how the mother of one of her foster children struggled.