Several community donations resulted in Safe Kids Kenai Peninsula purchasing a special needs car seat for a child in the Soldotna area. Due to medical needs, the child needed a specialty car seat to assist in his care and transport. The young man had outgrown conventional car seats, but still needed the positional support that a harnessing car seat offered.
Brad Nelson, Coordinator for Safe Kids – Kenai Peninsula tells KSRM:
“I was able to attend, with some other people in the area, a special needs car seat class for children with special needs. It’s an ‘Everybody Rides Safe’ course. In this course, we learned about children like that. I was able to come back and get a hold of the parents and say we learned all of this through this course and there was some seats and products out there for your child. Brought the parents in and we met and showed them some of the different products out there. Of course, these products, like the seat that we wound up getting is over $2,000.”
Nelson said that Save Kids – Kenai Peninsula partnered with the parents, Central Peninsula Health Foundation, and Central Peninsula Hospital to gather funds for a specialty car seat that cost over $2,000:
“I got with Kathy Gensel with the Central Peninsula Health Foundation. Through money from the parents, through money of mine at Safe Kids, through the Alaska Highway Safety Office, through her and the health foundation, through donations from the community, we were able to gather enough money to help get the parents this seat. We were able to buy this seat, get this seat, install it in their car. Right now, to this day, they are out using this seat and it has already made a difference with the parents.”
The class was taught by Sara Penisten, Safe Kids Alaska Coordinator and Renee Witmer, Safe Kids Spokane. The class intent is to provide more in-depth training to CPS technicians of issues related to transporting children with special health care needs.
The Kenai Peninsula has trained and certified car seat technicians throughout the area, several of which have additional training with special needs children situations.
