Helping Children Arrive Home Safely

To an outsider, installing a car seat for a Spanish-speaking family with a child who has special needs may sound like quite a challenge. But the Maggie Adalyn Otto Safely Home car seat fitting station handles such tasks with ease, illustrating how far the program has come in just five years.

Packard Children’s launched Safely Home in 2003 to address the high national and local rates of incorrectly installed car seats. Working one-on-one with patient families and other local residents, the program’s certified safety technicians ensure a proper fit for every car seat they inspect.

Generous philanthropic support, including an initial grant from the Children’s Fund, has enabled the program to keep pace with the overwhelming response from the community, says Nancy Sanchez, Packard’s community relations manager. A team of three technicians now provides fittings six days a week at the Hospital and in surrounding communities. This past year, the program achieved a major milestone--the installation of its 5,000th car seat.

To broaden their capabilities, Safely Home technicians have collaborated with social workers to serve children with special needs, adapting safety seats to accommodate oxygen tanks, casts, and different types of restraint systems as needed.

The program also has developed partnerships to build awareness among local Spanish-speaking and low-income communities. In 2007, the Safely Home van made regular visits to Ravenswood Family Health Center in East Palo Alto as well as San Juan Bautista Child Development Center and Somos Mayfair in San Jose.

''Our outreach to Spanish-speaking families is extremely important,'' says Ben Arias, lead technician. ''Bringing the service to them is often the only exposure they have to the importance of child passenger safety.''

Safely Home is quickly becoming a model for fitting stations statewide. Sanchez and Arias plan to train additional technicians and hope to assist interested agencies in launching fitting stations of their own. The program’s success is a prime example of how gifts to the Children’s Fund help ensure the health and well being of local children and their families.