Macon-Bibb Health Department awarded $20K grant to provide 200 car seats

The Buckle Up for Life Program grant will allow the county to distribute car seats and provide installation training for families on WIC or food stamps.

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – The Macon-Bibb County Health Department was recently awarded $20,000 through The Buckle Up for Life Program to purchase more than 200 car seats.

Health educator and safe kids’ coordinator Abbie Price says The Health Department partnered with The Buckle Up for Life Program, which is a national car seat safety program to provide locals with safe car seat after seeing an increase in the need.

“We have a very big need in our community for car seats,” she said. “So, I’m always looking for grants to help our community, so being awarded this amount, it’s the largest amount we have had. It felt good to be able to get that money to help the community. We operate off a waiting list, and so we get referrals from many different organizations. We had to shut out waiting list down for a couple of weeks because we had so many requests and we didn’t have the car seats coming in. So, we hope that this grant will be able to distribute more car seats to people who need it in the community.”

She says these cars seats will be given to parents who receive WIC or food stamps and don’t a useable car seat for their child. They will also provide a certified passenger safety technician to teach families how to properly install a seat.

“Three out of four car seats across the county are installed incorrectly,” she said. “So, with child safety technicians, we take a week of training to learn everything about car seats, cars, how to install them, the tips and tricks you would need to know on how to make sure it’s installed correctly, and your child is safe. When you come to us were looking at how it fits into your car, things about your car that you didn’t know that we know. So, we encourage everyone to get their seats checked by a child safety technician.” 

Price says the main goal is to keep kids in the county safe.

“We see a lot of kids that are riding around in car seats that are installed incorrectly, or don’t have a car seat,” she said. “Our goal in all this is to make sure all kids ride safe every time there in a car.”

To inquire about eligibility, you can call The Macon-Bibb County Health Department at (478) 745-0411.