How to find a car seat tech in Calgary??

[EllasMum]

Does anyone know how to find a car seat tech in Calgary?? I tried emailing the City of Calgary but was (most unhelpfully) simply directed to their website. Does the fire department have car seat techs? Police, maybe? Please help! Thanks!

[hipmaman]

I have a cyber-friend who is a tech. Email me off-site and I'll send your email to her so you two can get connect.

[email protected]

[Neatfreak]

Emergency services in Calgary discontinued their inspection services in the spring of 2004 (just before my daughter was born - argh!), reportedly because too many parents were abusing the service by taking their seats there to *be installed* instead of attempting to install the seats themselves and just having the installation checked and corrected. Bah.

The CHR now has a car seat seminar, but it's really just educational info, not actual checks.

[EllasMum]

I must admit that until I discovered this forum (and the car seat one!), that is what I thought the clinics were for also! I think it is a pretty widely held misconception as two of my friends (to quote them) "had their car seats installed by the fire department". Hmm... Anyway, I totally understand that it makes sense to only offer a review or check of previously installed seats. It is disappointing to me that the City of Calgary would discontinue the service rather than simply requiring that people show up with their seats already installed. I wonder if other cities have encountered this same problem?

[Neatfreak]

Gosh, I was really upset over this! I think that there are still checks being done in Edmonton; I meant to go about a year ago when I was visiting my parents but I had the day wrong.

[EllasMum]

Maybe if we all gave up half of our Ralphbucks they'd reinstate the car seat clinics... Ha ha! ;-)

[sweetpea]

Not sure about techs, but I thought you could just take it to your community fire station and they check it for you?

[Neatfreak]

I think that a lot of parents would pay a fee for this service, to be honest :)

[EllasMum]

Or what about a charge but all proceeds go to STARS or the Alberta Childrens Hospital? Perhaps we should suggest that to the City! I imagine that there would be Emergency Services Personnel who would volunteer...

[hipmaman]

>Emergency services in Calgary discontinued their inspection
>services in the spring of 2004 (just before my daughter was
>born - argh!), reportedly because too many parents were
>abusing the service by taking their seats there to *be
>installed* instead of attempting to install the seats
>themselves and just having the installation checked and
>corrected. Bah.
>
>The CHR now has a car seat seminar, but it's really just
>educational info, not actual checks.

I can't speak for the service in Calgary, but I'll make some comments based on what I know in my area and my experience...

Clinics are intended for educational purpose so that we can show parents what to do so that they can do things for themselves. That also helps to reduce the wait-time on our list. We (in Mississauga SJA) have a wait-list of about 2 months! But we don't turn parents away just because they feel that they need us to check things over or even install their seats.

The biggest problem we face is the low number of techs available to do clinics/checks. Since national program came into place (March 2003), all people who might have been trained, might be been doing checks/clinics still needed to be upgrade their skills, re-trained and re-certified. If you don't have this certification, you can't do checks/clinics. This might lower the number of techs available somewhat.

The other thing is there are techs with places like the police department, fire department, health units who are usually do checks/clinics during working hours as they are paid techs. The rest of techs like myself, are volunteers with full-time jobs (that are often not CRS-related :)) and families. So our time is very limited and can only do nights and weekends. For example, Mississauga SJA carseat team is staffed mostly with volunteers. Hence our long list of waiting time. It's frustrated for us as well as parents, but unless we get more techs, it's hard to solve this wait time.

Short of certified techs might be the issue in Calgary too though. You ladies should contact the City and see what they can do about it to bring the service back.

The other issue with for-profit techs is the high liability insurance. If I could get a fee of $10 per seat I have done, I'd be rich by now, LOL. But I don't go into 'private practice' because it's not worth my worry of upset parents suing me and I can't afford the high insurance cost since it's not my primary business.

Some baby boutiques here do offer installation service though. Some, but not all. The Safety Superstore send their customers who spent tons of money on Bugaboo, Britax carseat, etc. to ME for free installation!!! I made a mistake of given them my home phone number thinking that it would only be for emergency help. Well, I get calls from worried moms in tears asking for help. I can't turn them away, and the wait list is so long at SJA, most of the times, I'm educating these parents in my driveway in between chauffering the kids to their wkend activities.

Oh enough venting from me :) I think I digressed big time here.