Safe Start helps rural communities during Child Passenger Safety Week

Car seat experts from the nonprofit organization Safe Start Infant and Child Health and Safety are on tour for National Child Passenger Safety Week.

Safe Start founder Liz Montgomery and operations manager Brian Rauscher are traveling to rural communities in northern Idaho and further south to conduct child seat safety testing in towns that might not otherwise have access to these resources.

“Our rural families are underserved,” Montgomery said Tuesday. “We are removing barriers by going into those communities and providing them with the same access to services that already exist in Kootenai County.”

Safe Start conducted more than 1,000 child seat safety checks last year, including 338 for families in Kootenai County.

“If a family comes in and has an expired car seat that was in an accident, a car seat that doesn’t fit their kids, we have brand new car seats,” Montgomery said.

In 2022, 98% of the car seats given away by Safe Start went to Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed (ALICE) families.

“We focus on education and injury prevention for children,” Rauscher said. “We just make sure that everyone who leaves here has exactly what they need.”

According to Safe Start data, children in rural communities are five times more likely to die in a car crash, more than six times more likely to use incorrect child restraints or no child restraints at all, and the misuse rate of child restraints on the road can be as high as 91% in rural communities.

“We know small towns very well,” says Montgomery, who grew up in St. Maries. “We love them and want to make sure their families are taken care of.”

Rauscher grew up in the small town of Anaconda, Montana. He said Safe Start began its rural education program during National Child Passenger Safety Week, held annually the third week of September following the 2020 COVID lockdowns. He and Montgomery brought a few dozen new car seats to Orofino, where three families were waiting when they arrived at the car seat checkpoint a half-hour early.

“The first girl arrived in a 1996 Plymouth Voyager with all the windows smashed except the driver's window,” Rauscher said.

She was 17, pregnant and single and had no idea about child seat safety.

“I said, 'I don't care what you drive – your child will be super safe in this car seat and you will know how to do it and you will be able to install this car seat in any car,'” Rauscher said.

So many people were helped that day that Rauscher's father in Coeur d'Alene had to deliver more new car seats to the team for the safety event the next day.

Safe Start and its certified volunteer child safety technicians are committed to ensuring families know how to use a car seat safely and correctly to avoid injuries when traveling with infants and young children.

“They are extremely important to us,” Montgomery said. “Without our car seat technicians, we would not be able to serve all of these families.”

She said every family deserves to be educated about child car safety and to have the resources to do so. Safe Start is also a Coeur d'Alene-based resource for information and training on safe infant sleep.

Visit safestartnw.org for dates and times when the Safe Start Rural Education Outreach team and its mobile safety lab will be conducting free car seat safety checks in area communities.

Safe Start will also host the 2024 Northwest Infant Survival and SIDS Alliance Run for the Angels 5K Memorial Run/Walk and Family Day on October 13 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Riverstone Park.