A
Ancica
Guest
Hello to all!
I am new to this forum, just discovered it two days ago and was very pleasantly surprised It is my first posting to the forum and I hope it will be one of many.
I noticed that there are some members that are from Europe and am hoping that they can provide me with some info I have been trying to get but have not been very successful.
Namely, although I live in Canada, I am very actively involved in car seat education and advocacy in Croatia, my country of birth and childhood. The organization I am involved with, association Parents in Action - RODA, runs, amongst other things, a car seat education campaign and is as such the only source of information and support for parents in Croatia on the issue of car seat use (which is still dismally low compared to North America but nevertheless we have achieved tremendeous results).
As part of our campaign we have built a network of volunteers and have created and run a course for these volunteers as car seat safety advisors, who in turn organize car seat clinics throughout Croatia, mirroring the similar programs in Canada and the USA (our course material is based on the Canadian manuals but adapted to the European setting and regulations).
The question that I have for fellow European members on this forum is: What types of education and support for proper use of car seats are there for the people in your countries?
For example, we have not heard of car seat clinics anywhere else in Europe, except for a milder version in Great Britain (where they are run by local health offices in collaboration with Britax but do not involve actual proper installation of car seats - rather the parents are only informed if they are using the seat correctly or not).
Also, are there any government and non-government campaigns in your country focusing on child seat use and what do they entail?
If you are part of such a campaign, what are the main difficulties you are coming accross? What are your major successes and the means through which you have achieved them?
I apologize if I have misjudged and posted this question at a wrong subforum, or if it is not appropriate for this forum at all as the administrators have envisioned it.
I do hope that I have not, though, because I am unaware of any such forum that is European-based that would allow exhange of ideas and information pertinent to the issue and the problems we, the car seat advocates and educators, face and are in many ways very different from those faced in the North-American setting. And so discovering this forum has provided me with a glimpse of hope that there may be a place where we can exchange these ideas and information.
Yours truly
I am new to this forum, just discovered it two days ago and was very pleasantly surprised It is my first posting to the forum and I hope it will be one of many.
I noticed that there are some members that are from Europe and am hoping that they can provide me with some info I have been trying to get but have not been very successful.
Namely, although I live in Canada, I am very actively involved in car seat education and advocacy in Croatia, my country of birth and childhood. The organization I am involved with, association Parents in Action - RODA, runs, amongst other things, a car seat education campaign and is as such the only source of information and support for parents in Croatia on the issue of car seat use (which is still dismally low compared to North America but nevertheless we have achieved tremendeous results).
As part of our campaign we have built a network of volunteers and have created and run a course for these volunteers as car seat safety advisors, who in turn organize car seat clinics throughout Croatia, mirroring the similar programs in Canada and the USA (our course material is based on the Canadian manuals but adapted to the European setting and regulations).
The question that I have for fellow European members on this forum is: What types of education and support for proper use of car seats are there for the people in your countries?
For example, we have not heard of car seat clinics anywhere else in Europe, except for a milder version in Great Britain (where they are run by local health offices in collaboration with Britax but do not involve actual proper installation of car seats - rather the parents are only informed if they are using the seat correctly or not).
Also, are there any government and non-government campaigns in your country focusing on child seat use and what do they entail?
If you are part of such a campaign, what are the main difficulties you are coming accross? What are your major successes and the means through which you have achieved them?
I apologize if I have misjudged and posted this question at a wrong subforum, or if it is not appropriate for this forum at all as the administrators have envisioned it.
I do hope that I have not, though, because I am unaware of any such forum that is European-based that would allow exhange of ideas and information pertinent to the issue and the problems we, the car seat advocates and educators, face and are in many ways very different from those faced in the North-American setting. And so discovering this forum has provided me with a glimpse of hope that there may be a place where we can exchange these ideas and information.
Yours truly