A state grant will enable Contra Costa County public health nurses to give free car seats to their low-income clients and provide education on how to use the safety seats properly to protect their children.
The $84,000 “Child Passenger Safety” grant will fund activities to help prevent injuries and deaths to children receiving comprehensive home visits from public health nurses in Contra Costa County. Funding for the grant was provided to Contra Costa Health Services (CCHS) by the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS).
“Public health nurses in Contra Costa County serve vulnerable, low-income families who are impacted daily by health inequities,” said Michelle Rivero, a program manager for CCHS. “Our families struggle with meeting the basic needs of the children. Rent, food, clothing all become priorities over car seats, and many of our families use old, expired car seats. This program is a much-needed resource to help keep children safe.”
Funding from OTS will go toward a variety of activities to promote occupant safety and decrease injuries and deaths due to improper use of car seats, boosters or seat belts:
• Child seat safety check-ups/inspections
• Child safety seat education classes
• Distribute a minimum of 80 child safety seats to Public Health Nursing Home Visiting clients
• Promote safety seat recycling and importance of discarding used and expired car seats
Car crashes remain the leading cause of death for children 13 and under.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 46% of car seats are not used properly.
“Children should be as safe as possible when traveling in a car,” OTS Director Barbara Rooney said. “Funding for child passenger safety education and training allows our partners to make sure children are in the right car seat that is being used correctly.”
7 comments
If these families are struggling with rent, food, and clothing, how can they afford a car, gas, and insurance?
Um, you may want to learn about the working poor.
The real question is how can they afford kids??? And why do we all have to subsidize their poor planning?
cause maybe they live in the car, don’t have insurance, and bum for gas money???
Expensive seats. Works out for the minimum 80 seats to over $1000 each. Expense must be in the teaching how to use instead of reading the installation instructions.
Nothing is free. These were paid for by money stolen from the California taxpayers.
The Car Seat Industrial Complex, with a complicit government, is constantly changing the car seat rules. Thus parents are required by law to keep buying expensive car seats and filling our landfills with these large hunks of plastic. Any car seats that requires police and firefighters to be trained in how hold clinics where they in turn teach parents how to use a car seat are so poorly designed that they should not even be allowed to be sold. This grant money should instead be used to design a car seat that is not obsolete before a kid even grows out of it, and is obvious how to use properly.
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