Just bumping (as I found this info. useful).
I do have a questions though. How are the people who staff these inspections trained? I went to one when DS was a newborn and I seemed to know more about my particular seat (Graco Snugride) than the first inspector did. I.e. telling me that the handle had to be down, when manual clearly said positions A (up), D/E (down) are okay. There was a second, more experienced, person though who straightened the first person out when I started questioning them. And that was before I started reading these boards!
They take a basic training course that teaches them how to staff seat checks basically. Most of the capital health nurses are not trained in the national program and many of them are not up to date on info or the way that kids fit different seats. They consider themselves technicians because they've done an educational course, but it's not inclusive or comparable to the 16hr national course. They're actually not considered technicians. There may be a few that have completed the 16hr course, but chances are pretty good the nurse you talk to hasn't.
Most of them have done this:
Child Safety Seat Training:
Capital Health provides regular child seat training to community agency staff, social workers, contracted driving agencies and other interested parties throughout the year. Training sessions are usually a half-day and offered out of the training centre located in Strathcona County. Information on training
sessions may be obtained by calling... ... and asking for the injury prevention program.
Inspector training is also available for individuals who wish to become involved
as Child Safety Seat Inspectors at Capital Health organized Clinics. This training will also be adapted to reflect the new National Training Standards for those wishing to obtain Technician Training.
From the sounds of that quote, they'll be putting some of the same training from the national program in to the one being done at present, but it's still not the technician training since St John's Ambulance is the only provider of that training. Although I am curious to know what exactly they teach in an "inspector" training course.
I've dealt with one health nurse at a firehall seat check here in the city when my dd was a baby, and then ds's nurse at the grey nuns the day he was released was also trained to do the firehall seatchecks, and both gave bad advice. The one that was ds's nurse actually made me LOOSEN his harness because she couldn't fit two big chubby fingers between his collar bone and the harness. This is not the national guideline, or the current Alberta guideline. She was completely unaware of the current recommendations of 1 finger/unable to pinch a horizontal fold - and this is stated right in the Alberta Occupant Restraint Manual. :thumbsdown:
Anyways, all that to say that I wouldn't trust their car seat advice unless it's basic like checking there's no wiggle room at the belt path and that the seat is tethered. At the firehall seat checks they don't even ask to see your vehicle manual. I could go on... but I'll stop myself.
It's possible that fire station checks are staffed periodically by a child restraint systems technician, but this is the exception and not the rule. We were told in our class that when we volunteer at checks such as the firehall ones, that we will be in a training role with the nurses when they have questions. We are not able to certify them, but will be providing training and answering questions as needed.
Anyways, I'm a tech here in Edmonton and you can always send people my direction. There aren't any firehall seat checks schedule into fall as far as I know.
