Vitality Women's Clinic Shares Advice to Ensure Car Seat Safety

Vitality Women's Clinic Partners on Child Passenger Safety | Our Daily Show Interview

GODFREY - Vitality Women’s Clinic reminds community members to make sure their car seats are correctly installed.

Jackie Duty, executive director of Vitality, noted that it’s important to the organization to ensure caregivers have access to resources and education. This includes how to know when your child’s car seat is unsafe. Duty and Skye Bellarmine with the National Child Passenger Safety organization shared more about their focus on ensuring child passenger safety.

“Ninety-five percent of the time, car seats are not installed properly,” Bellarmine said. “I could walk into any parking lot anywhere, look at all the car seats, and they would either be misinstalled, too loose, don’t fit the car, or expired.”

This issue is close to Bellarmine’s heart. She was hit head-on by a wrong-way driver with her 13-month-old twins in the backseat. Bellarmine almost lost her life and spent a week in a coma, but her twins came out unscathed because their car seats were installed properly.

Since then, Bellarmine has begun speaking at schools and in hospitals to advocate for car seat safety. She believes there should be a certified technician on staff at the hospitals who can double-check that car seats are installed properly before people leave with their newborns. She also reminds people to check their car seats every time they uninstall and reinstall them.

Bellarmine noted that there are several “acceptable” brands of car seats, but buyers should always check the recall notices before they purchase a car seat. She also reminds people that car seats do expire, and this is another important factor to consider.

“Always look for the recall notices. If you’re about to go to the store or you’re going to order one online, even the booster seats, always check for updated recall notices,” she said. “Is it tight enough, is it installed right, does it fit the car, does it fit the child, is there a recall on it or is it expired? It takes about six to ten years for car seats to expire. Think about the extreme temperatures that happen in your car. It’s that, the safety standards do change, and just wear and tear.”

Safety standards have changed a lot in recent years. Caregivers are now encouraged to keep their child in a rear-facing seat until they are 4. After this age, kids should sit in booster seats until they are 8 years old, weigh 80 pounds, and measure 4 feet 9 inches.

Bellarmine noted that some caregivers “drop the ball” and skip the booster seat, but this can be dangerous because the seatbelt can cut into the child’s organs in the case of a wreck. She urges caregivers to follow the safety standards and do their research.

As part of her advocacy, Bellarmine also talks about the dangers of leaving your child in the car. She recommends leaving a stuffed animal in the front seat or doing something else to remind yourself that the child is in the backseat. This can prevent deaths.

Duty thanked Bellarmine for her work to support caregivers and children. Duty noted that Vitality offers parenting classes as well as a resource shop where caregivers can obtain car seats and other supplies. She hopes Vitality can provide education and resources to both new and expectant parents.

“It’s something I don’t ever remember talking about when I had my little guys. It was just something that we just assumed we were doing it well,” Duty said. “But if I had been plugged into these parenting classes, I could have had access to more education and could have made sure, had that peace of mind and known that I was doing it the right way and my boys were going to be safe.”

She encourages people to visit the official Vitality Women’s Clinic website for more information about their work and resources.

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