Imagine you are a single mother of an autistic child who needs a high-weight harness to keep your child safely restrained in their seat, or a refugee who just recently came to the U.S. and has been pulled over for not having their children in car seats or a grandparent, on a fixed income, who suddenly got custody of their grandchild. What options do these families have to safely transport their children?

KidVantage provides nearly 3,000 safe car seats to local children annually. The organization strives to provide the best options for the families they serve, but sometimes those options aren’t accessible. If the best options aren’t available or accessible to families, KidVantage helps by finding alternatives.

“[W]e realized that the best option that we’re always striving for wasn’t always an option, so we had to be okay with better, or in most of those cases, good…” said KidVantage’s IT and Purchasing Manager Cori Benson who also leads their car seat distribution program. “[W]ith the good rating the goal is that the family leave safer than when they arrived.”

KidVantage has adopted a car seat redistribution program that includes used car seats. This program hasn’t been popular amongst similar organizations, but that story may be changing its tune. Developments from manufacturers and child passenger safety professionals have shown potential of widened adoption of the redistribution process.

While KidVantage does accept and redistribute used car seats, this isn’t a task the organization takes lightly. In 2015 two KidVantage staff members earned their Child Passenger Safety Technicians (CPSTs) and the organization implemented Washington State’s Pass-It program.

 “[It] made sure that every seat we were looking at, we were doing kind of the same process…” Benson said. “It provided us with a checklist to make sure that we were covering all our bases.”

KidVantage has made adaptations over time to allow the material to better mesh with the organization’s needs. “[I]t started out really rough… but as we kind of continued the process, and years went, it just kind of became what you do,” Benson recalled. “There’s not another option, and we’ve continued to refine it to make it easier… now it’s just kind of our process.”

When a member of the community donates a used car seat it must be accompanied by our Car Seat Acceptance Form. The form does three very important jobs:

1. Allows donors to determine if the car seat can be donated before coming to one of our Hubs.
2. Provides KidVantage with a history of the car seat.
3. Allows our intake team, who are often not CPSTs, to do a quick look over and make sure it meets our basic requirements.

Seats that are accepted by our intake team are then evaluated with a thorough examination performed by one of our CPSTs. If a seat doesn’t pass inspection the straps are cut and the seat is tossed. Once the CPST confirms that the seat has passed inspection and can be redistributed final adjustments are then made.

This process has not only helped ensure that more children have a safe ride home but also gained recognition. KidVantage’s CPSTs, Cori Benson and Brandi Fields, attended the Lifesavers Conference in Long Beach, California, where Benson presented on KidVantage’s car seat distribution program.

Benson shared that she felt nervous to share as many other organizations shied away from used car seats, but she knew that their program was helping to keep more kids safe. Following the presentation Benson received feedback she hadn’t anticipated.

“[D]uring the presentation, I got a lot of questions about it,” Benson said. “There was a lot of interest in it… people came up to me and said, ‘My organization is doing a similar program, but I don’t talk to people about it because we’re just completely shot down.’”

Following their return from the Life Savers Conference, Benson and Fields were invited to the Washington Safety Summit where they were presented with Washington Child Passenger Safety Injury Prevention Awards. Also receiving awards were CPSTs Wanda Yamashita (former KidVantage employee) and Lisa Cook (Shoreline Hub volunteer).

Benson shared her shock when their names were called, “[T]hat was just a very surprised award that we weren’t expecting and just [shows] that our program has made a real difference in the community’s that we’re working in.”

KidVantage has the ability to provide more families with car seats because of used car seat donations from the community. Since 2019 KidVantage has distributed more than 11,000 car seats, with the help of their partner providers, to families in 5 counties. More than 1,800 of those were used car seats that KidVantage processed, evaluated and redistributed. The remaining 9,200 car seats were purchased by KidVantage. That’s over 11,000 local families supported, over 11,000 local needs fulfilled and over 11,000 local children with a safe ride home.