County Deploys Certified Helmet Fitters
There’s an item on tonight’s council agenda that highlights the ridiculous overhead that government do-gooders can add to otherwise trivial tasks. In this case, the Orange County Health Care Agency wants to give out 300 helmets to poor kids in Fullerton. Sounds like a simple task, right? Buy 300 helmets and give them out, hoping that kids will smash their melons a bit less frequently.
But that’s not how government operates – in this case, the county hires Helmet Fitting trainers to train Helmet Fitters to fit helmets on juvenile fittee’s. Before that can happen, Helmet Fitter trainee’s must be Helmet Fitter certified, presumably by some kind of Helmet Fitting certification authority.
But we can’t have certified Helmet Fitters running around without releasing the city from Helmet Fitting risk. And we can’t have Helmet Fitters fitting helmets without filling out a Helmet Consent Form. In case you think I’m making this up, here is the text from the grant request:
This grant provides 300 helmets for distribution to low income children under age 18 living in Fullerton. Parks and Recreation staff and volunteers will be trained and certified as Helmet Fitters by the County of Orange Health Care Agency. Prior to receiving a helmet, each recipient and/or parent of recipient will receive helmet safety education by the certified Helmet Fitter, complete the Voluntary Release Assumption of Risk and Indemnity Agreement form and the Helmet Consent Form
This obvious make-work project would be comical if it wasn’t a complete waste of city and county resources. If this task must be done, please give the helmets to some non-profit who can tackle it without all of the overhead.
Doesn’t Liberal OC blogger Chris Prevatt work for the Health Care Agency? I think he should wear a helmet.
This looks like a real case of gummint overkill. Are they serious? What kind of idiot would sign on to this? Here’s an idea: give ’em to the boys and girls club. Period.
Helmet installation is too important to be left in the hands of juveniles. Won’t somebody think of the children!
Now that I think of it they ought to issue three of these to Keller, Bankhead, and Jones. Won’t someone please think of the Council Bozos!
The orange county board of supervisors has been stacked with republicans since the 80’s. Aren’t they supposed to be against this kind of crapola?
when I bought my child a bicycle helmet, I simply read the instructions and correctly fitted it to my child’s head. the assumption fullerton city council makes is parents of lown-income children can’t read.
“If this task must be done, please give the helmets to some non-profit who can tackle it without all of the overhead.”
Well said. Why not the Boys and Girls Club? The teen club youth can fit the little kids for whom these are intended!
See comment #2.
Pam Keller identified herself as a certified helmet fitter at the council meeting tonight.
Well, now we know if we only suspected before. Cradle to grave head protection brought to us by people with the densest skulls and the least to protect.
For real?? I could see maybe, just maybe, publicly admitting that you’ve received training in CPR, or perhaps even how to work a fire extinguisher, but a Certified Helmet Fitter? Unbelievable! What a fine item to have on your curriculum vitae!
I wonder if Mrs. Keller has had a head injury.