IFCK-L continues to work to establish a hospital-wide Child Passenger Safety (CPS) discharge process that would fully serve all families while being sustainable within the hospital system. We have been working on two specific projects within that larger effort. The first with Orthopedics is to develop a loaner HIPPO program to address the identified need of children in SPICA casts for special short-term seats. The second with NICU is to apply the most current knowledge about safe transport of premature infants, including the sharing of state of the art science on angle tolerance testing, use of car beds, and the uncertain science of graduation from car beds.
Children with disabilities present a unique injury prevention/child passenger safety need, so our program added a focus on child passenger safety for children with special health care needs.Last fall MTW completed the Riley Hospital training and certification to be a special needs CPS technician, giving our state a total of 5 such valuable people, and we have a small but steady stream of consults from across the state. We also provide consultation to University of Kentucky Children's Hospital and to the Commission for Children with Special Health Care Needs. A recent complex example involved working with a deaf mother and translator on seats for 5 children under age 5, one of whom is physically disabled and half of whom are also deaf.
