T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Marshall County Deputy Jon Rogers, back left, and Marshalltown Police DepartmAent Officer Derick Garcia, right, helped to lead a car seat safety event at Child Abuse Prevention Services in Marshalltown on Thursday afternoon.

It may seem somewhat simple or trivial, but having a car seat properly positioned and fastened can make all the difference in a potentially life threatening situation.

For over a decade — since at least 2012, according to Chief Deputy Ben Veren — the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office has been teaming up with Child Abuse Prevention Services (CAPS) to provide free car seat safety trainings, and on Thursday, Veren and deputies Jon Rogers and Andy Cole held two sessions: one in Spanish with translation from Marshalltown Police Department Officer Derick Garcia and another for Karen families translated by CAPS employee Plu Meh.

Veren said one of the biggest areas of confusion with car seats is when a child should use different types of seats — back facing for infants until they reach one year or 20 pounds and can begin to sit facing forward — and due to the wide variance in sizes of children and the types of vehicles they’re riding in, finding the right seat can be difficult.

“We do a lot of these education events. These are good outreach activities. It’s a good chance to expose people to things they may not know about child safety seats, and then, with this type of program, it’s kind of a segway into an individual plan where we schedule a time to meet with that family and inspect their seat and their child in their vehicle to make sure it’s safe,” Veren said. “We’d much rather educate people on the front side than have a situation where (there’s) a crash or somebody’s hurt or killed because of a misuse or no use… The other thing too is these community outreach events are good because it’s a positive law enforcement contact for families, too. They see us out doing something other than enforcement.”

Both the MCSO, with five, and the MPD, with two, now have multiple child passenger safety technicians on staff, and CAPS Program Supervisor Esmeralda Monroy has been grateful for their willingness to work together to ensure every child is safe while traveling.

“This partnership has been great because yes, of course, it serves as an opportunity for them to get some education on how to properly install their car seats, but most importantly, it really serves as an opportunity for them to have a positive connection with law enforcement,” Monroy said. “We work with a lot of families that come from other countries where law enforcement is really not safe, and so this provides a great opportunity for families to connect and feel comfortable reaching out if they were ever to need help.”

By attending events like the one held Thursday or scheduling an individual car seat inspection, low-income families can also qualify for “NEST points,” which allow them to purchase items like diapers, wipes and formula for their children.

“I think that we have really been able to work together really nicely in the past several years to make sure that children in the community are safer,” Monroy said. “The partnership that we’ve had with the Sheriff’s Office and the PD, also, has been invaluable to our families, to our programs, and we’re grateful to work with them.”

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Contact Robert Maharry

at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.