14 students training to be Certified Child Passenger Safety Technicians administer free car seat safety checks at Great Plains Health

NORTH PLATTE, Neb. (KNOP) – Lincoln County Kids Safe and Great Plains Health partnered for Saturday’s car seat check event. The event was held at Great Plains Health.

Serena Findley, car-seat tech and labor and delivery nurse, discusses the connection with Great Plains Health.

“Great Plains has always been a great sponsor and a great collaborative partner with us,” said Findley. “They make things so much easier for us. Anytime I have approached them with a community event that focuses on kids’ and family safety, they’re always 100% involved.”

The soon-to-be certified technicians administered the car seat checks.

Safe Kids instructor Sara Estrada shared information about the class with KNOP News 2.

“These techs have been working for the last four weeks, training through all their different education, not only on cars and car seats but also on how kids fit in both,” Estrada said. “They have a lot of education that they have to go through, and then today is kind of their graduation day as they get to actually play physically with real kids and parents and do their education that they’ve been learning and working hard to get.”

Estrada said the students are checking to see how the child fits in the seat and how the seat fits in the car. They also check for expiration dates, look to see if the car seat has been in a car accident and check if the seat has been recalled. Estrada said they are checking everything to make sure children are riding safely.

“So basically, they’re asking the parents, do you know the history of this seat? Are you the original owner of it?“ Estrada said. “Asking those important questions, if you don’t know the history of that seat, then we have brand new seats available that we can give to make sure that those kids are riding in a safe seat. Unfortunately, we can’t always tell whether a car seat has been in a crash. I’ve seen ones where the cars have been totaled, and there is no mark on that car seat after it has been in a crash; you don’t want to use them again. It wouldn’t be safe.”

Lincoln County Kids Safe provides free car seat checks twice a month by appointment only.

“We ask that they give us a call,” said Findley. “And that is just based on Volunteer hours from our certified technicians.”

Findley shares information about the grant they received.

“We did receive a grant through DHHS and the Nebraska Office of Highway Safety. This grant allowed us to have more education and more equipment to train more techs on this side of the state,” said Findley.

With the grant, Findley said they certified 14 new techs.

If you want to find more information, you can visit their website.

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