Capacity for child seat safety

Tairawhiti Roads and Turanga Health have teamed up to help to make children safer in vehicles. Together the organisations will provide a scheme to assist families in need with suitable child car restraints (car seats) and increase capacity of qualified restraint technicians for our region.

“There is a real need for car restraints in Tairawhiti,” says Tairawhiti Roads’ road safety educator, Dianne Akurangi.

“During regular roadside check points organised by Plunket with Tairawhiti Roads, NZ Police and Turanga Health, we’ve seen it all. A regular theme is seeing children who are too big or too small for their car seats or where children are buckled in securely but unfortunately the seat is not securely fitted in the vehicle. As well that we still see children who are travelling in cars without any restraint.”

Plunket no longer sells or rents out car seats. The charity’s car seat service which has helped many thousands of families came to an end in January 2017 as the service was no longer financially viable for the organisation.

“Turanga Health have identified 150 high needs whanau in Tairawhiti currently in need of seats – so this partnership will assist in bridging the gap,” says Ms Akurangi.

“As well as providing seats to families in need we’ll ensure the seat is correctly fitted inside the vehicle and the family is trained and are confident in installing their child’s restraint.”

“We’ve also engaged a qualified child restraints assessor to provide training to early childhood educators and kaimahi who work with children 0-6yrs.

“Last week ten participants took part in a two day training course.”

The newly qualified technicians will assist in delivering more community bolting and car restraint clinics where mechanics are available to install car seat anchor bolts onsite, normally a cost of $25.00, free of charge.”

ENDS

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