Showing posts with label Child safety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Child safety. Show all posts

Monday

Is Your Child Safe? - Coffee & Conversation

What is the most precious thing for a grandmother?




The answer is in the question.

A grandchild!

Our family do a lot of travelling so we have little tips we have picked up from our experiences along the way. We have lived abroad for two periods of time one in the US and one in Belgium hence giving us some regular travel and experiences with certain companies.

Up until 4 years ago we were a family of 5 - Fred and I and our 3 grown up children. Then in 2013 we became 6 with the addition of our daughter-in-law, 2 years ago we grew to 7 when our grandson was born, last year we added our son-in-law to make 8 and then 2 months ago we celebrated the birth of our granddaughter and now have to think of 9 people.

Last August we rented a house in Cornwall (south of England) to have all the family together to celebrate our 40th Wedding Anniversary - the first time we have all spent a week together.





This meant co-ordinating travel from Banbridge and Belfast in Northern Ireland, Leeds in North England and Seoul in South Korea, not the simplest of things to do.

Flights were booked eventually and then hire cars had to be sorted out which included 2 child seats and specifics had to detailed because different ages and heights are taken into consideration for the right seat to ensure the safety of each child.  So we got our son Daniel to get all the info right for booking the car seats along with the hire cars.

Unfortunately when we got there HERTZ did not have the right seats for us and one of the seats they were giving us was partly broken.  We suggested they ask the other car hire place beside there's to help out with a seat but they didn't have any suitable either.  This was on a Saturday afternoon and the Car Hire was closing down soon and we were stuck.

In the end we had to drive to our destination (over an hour away) with the two seats they had for us putting one seat in each car and have someone sit beside each child.  The arrangement then was that on the Monday Daniel and Fred would buy a new seat and drive back to the airport to return the two seats from the Car Hire and get one replacement seat.







Then after the holiday was over we had the job of trying to get the proper refund and compensation for what had happened and that was not easy or quick.

Although we had booked the right seats with the original reservation, the Car Hire company either could not be careful enough to get the right seats or just didn't know it really mattered but to us our grandchildren really mattered.


Are your children important and kept safe by others?

So to parents and grandparents
Please watch out if you are travelling and need child seats in your hire car to ensure that the ones they are giving you are right for your children.

And to the Car Hire Companies
Please train your workers to know more about child safety and to show concern when there may be a problem because we did not see any evidence of those two things from the employees we spoke with.