MARQUETTE — Marquette area parents spent Thursday afternoon learning the ins and outs of car seat safety at an event held at the Marquette Township Fire and Rescue building.

The multiagency collaboration featured personnel from several local police agencies, fire departments and medical care facilities instructing area residents on proper installation and use of car seats.

The community instruction comes after the personnel received a four-day training seminar. The training was done by five downstate instructors who traveled to the Upper Peninsula for the training, which resulted in 23 new certified technicians.

“About a year ago we realized that there was a need in our community to have more certified child passenger safety technicians due to the pandemic and some of the current technicians retiring. There just wasn’t a lot of people available to provide this service,” said Corey Holcomb, Early Childhood Education Director at Community Action Alger-Marquette. “It’s really important that we got this opportunity back out in the community.”

Also helping to organize and sponsor the event was staff from CAAM, U.P. Health Care Solutions, the U.P. Perinatal Collaborative, the WIC program at the Marquette County Health Department and other members of the community.

The event also allowed for some low-income families to receive a free car seat.

“Previously, the Kids Always Ride Safely program, which subsidized car seats as well as installation and education for families, lost funding and was closed,” said Katrina Keough, project director at Upper Peninsula Health Care Solutions.

“This left a very large gap in a resource that many utilized to ensure their families rode safely on the road. As a result of the end of the KARS program, many instructors lost their ability to maintain their certifications and certified child passenger safety technicians were no longer able to keep their certifications up to date, and as a result families went without appropriate car seats or none at all.”

The certified child passenger safety technicians focused on training the parents. The idea is that educating the parent will allow them to properly install the car seat themselves in case they ever have to move the car seat so they can ensure that it will always be safely installed.

“Up to 90% of new parents are installing their car seats incorrectly,” said Shilpa Jhobalia, parent liaison for the Great Start Collaborative Marquette.

“Sometimes the straps are wrong, or not tight enough. I said (to the trainees) that you guys are going be saving lives.”

Randy Crouch can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 242. His email address is rcrouch@miningjournal.net.