Three years ago, Selina Metcalfe discovered a remedy for the number-one cause of death among young children.
She was horrified to learn that the number-one killer of young children was car collisions and that a shocking number of those deaths could have been prevented by the correct placement and use of child car seats.
And yet there were little to no resources in our community to help parents with the often complex process of installing these seats and using them properly.
So Selina decided this was unacceptable. And, seeing no other option, she stepped up. In a completely volunteer role, Selina spent three years on course and self-education to become an expert on children’s restraint systems.
As her work became known, she would take calls, texts and emails from worried parents with questions about safely buckling their children into the appropriate seat for their size and weight, the correct seat angle and even going so far as to drive up to the hospital and meet parents with newborns, checking their car seats to ensure baby’s first ride home was as safe as possible. She’s created and maintained a Facebook page and spent her own money attending courses and creating resource materials for other families.
As it appears there’s no hope of any type of funding support for her work, Selina’s made the heart-wrenching decision to discontinue her one-woman volunteer effort.
“I feel horrible,” she says with tears in her eyes. “I feel like people are going to think that I don’t care about their kids. But the government doesn’t recognize this as a valid need and I can’t keep feeding it out of my own time and my own pocket.”
Remembering my own sense of panic about the safety of our car seat, which eventually required the not-included-in the-manual fix of using a pool noodle to prop it to the right angle, I felt tears come to my eyes too.
“Car seats are not straightforward,” says Selina. “They come with textbook-sized manuals and each one can vary, add that to nervous parents and it can be a very stressful process, with parents sometime driving around for weeks or months with a car seat that may not work as it should in a crash.”
Selina’s hope is another community agency will step up. In some communities, car seat checks can be done at fire halls, by nurses or other agencies.
“I think because of liability, no one wants to touch it. I contacted ICBC and they wouldn’t go near it with a 10-foot-pole. It’s very disheartening to hear nothing but no.”
The irony is not lost on me that the government will spend thousands of dollars on health screenings or learning programs for children, but won’t provide funding to increase safety for the single greatest reason for child deaths in North America.
Maybe it’s time to invest some cash where it could have the biggest payoff in terms of keeping children alive.