The Safety Store is a division of the Indiana University School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics. The store provides children, teens, adults and senior citizens with safety education and safety products at their shop in Riley Hospital for Children. With over 250 safety products like sleep sacks, bike helmets, smoke alarms, fire extinguishers, sunscreen and more, the Safety Store has something for all ages and stages of life. The store also focuses on building new partnerships, products and ways to reach and teach people about injury prevention.
Throughout the last two decades, the mission of The Safety Store has never changed: to provide safety products at the lowest cost possible, to teach proper use of products and best practices for preventing injury, and to promote the message that safety is for everyone of all ages and abilities.
The Safety Store’s history
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In January 2005, while Stroup was the director and Hankins was the associate director of the Community Education and Child Advocacy Department at Riley Hospital, the Safe Escape Program provided hospital families with adapted fire safety products for children with special health care needs. Being the first safety program like this in the country, this program at Riley proved that a children’s hospital is an ideal setting to reach hundreds of families in need of safety products and education.
“A friend from the local fire department stopped by our office one day and said, ‘you should really apply for this federal grant,’ so we did,” Stroup shared.
A common sentiment shared amongst Riley Hospital staff is that their work is personal because every child and every family matters. That belief is what sparked the desire to initially write grants to fund the Safe Escape Program.
Stroup and Hankins wrote several grant proposals to FEMA’s Assistance to Firefighters Fire Prevention and Safety Grants Program that were funded. FEMA approved their proposals to pilot and then expand the Safe Escape program. They went on to partner with the National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions (NACHRI, now the Children’s Hospital Association) and NACHRI was awarded FEMA funding used, in part, to support the Riley Hospital team being able to teach a select number of children’s hospitals across the country how to replicate Safe Escape as an integral program for their safety stores. The NACHRI grant also provided funds to support a start-up inventory of safety products, including Safe Escape products, for the safety stores of children’s hospitals that were trained by the Riley Hospital team.
In November 2004, Cara Fast, MSW, founding and current director of The Safety Store, joined the IU School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics as the child injury prevention program manager. Fast was responsible for facilitating the opening of the Safe Escape Program, and has been overseeing the operations since opening day.
“After looking at injury stats and community need, we transitioned the Safe Escape Program into The Safety Store during May 2005,” Fast shared. “Now we’re offering free safety education and access to low-cost safety products for the whole family.”
In 2009, The Safety Store received funding from the National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions’ FEMA grant that allowed the Riley team to train a cohort of other children’s hospitals to implement their own safety store in their pediatric hospital settings. Most of these stores are still operating today.
The Safety Store also renovated their space in 2009 to resemble the inside of a home in hopes of properly demonstrating how to use, install and maintain safety products while stressing the importance of being vigilant about safety habits for all family members.
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“We included a kitchen area, fireplace and appliances for us to use as teaching tools,” Fast shared. “We direct training to help teach families the importance of safety injury prevention in a comfortable, homelike setting where they can ask questions and have access to low-cost safety products.”
The comfortable home-like environment paired with the store staff’s knowledge help make it easy for families to visit the one-stop safety shop.
The Safety Store educators are prepared to educate and help caregivers select low-cost safety products for all safety needs: fire, bike, water, home, sun and safe sleep. The Store also carries a variety of baby feeding supplies, bottles, nursing pads, milk bags, training cups and more.
“All Safety Store staff are certified child passenger safety technicians that can provide education on how to install and use a car seat on our vehicle demo seat right in the store, which is in the Riley Outpatient Center at Riley Children’s Health,” Fast explained. “This allows new caregivers the opportunity to come purchase a car seat from the store’s selection while providing access for caregivers to upgrade their car seats during each stage of life.”
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With the extension of maternity services at Riley Children’s Health in 2021, experienced Safety Store educators began providing safe sleep education to new parents in the Riley Maternity Tower and the Riley neonatal intensive care unit. safe sleep education and practices are essential in reducing infant mortality and death due to unsafe sleep practices. Progress powered by purpose
One of the biggest challenges Stroup and Hankins faced was the time-intensive commitment required to demonstrate and educate families on Safe Escape products. Demonstrations often took anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half, depending on how many Safe Escape products were needed for a child after an assessment.
“Many of the products were new and unfamiliar to families, but the investment of time by families was worth it,” Hankins stated.
A particularly memorable experience for Stroup and Hankins involved a family who experienced a devastating house fire. A mother of three children with disabilities discovered The Safety Store and Safe Escape program while they were being treated at Riley Hospital. Realizing how difficult it could be to keep her children safe in an emergency, the mother was relieved to learn the store carried fire safety equipment and resources to fit her family’s needs in the future. With guidance from staff, she received and learned how to use items such as a strobe smoke detector, a fire-smothering blanket and an escape ladder. She left with a sense of comfort, knowing her children were better protected in case of another emergency.
In addition to the wide range of resources and products available in-store, the Safety Store proudly extends its services to Hoosiers across the state. Customers can shop online through the Safety Store website and choose either home delivery or in-store pickup.
The store continues to evolve to meet the changing needs of families and the community. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, The Safety Store developed the Safety Store Helpline, which is a free helpline open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. This resource connects helpline callers with live educators to answer all safety questions, providing safety education information or information about other community resources that may be helpful. For example, if someone calls the helpline seeking information about the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Program or the Health Department, the Safety Store has a community database set up to allow staff to send callers quickly to the resources that they may need. This helpline is open to everyone, and information is available on The Safety Store website..jpg?h=160&w=300&rev=1991b4e261204121ad7727e32e165d76&hash=D64B808EA0BD0D13F0D2305EA62853F5)
Stroup and Hankins have always recognized Fast’s inspired, passionate, dedicated, strong and steady leadership — as well as her steady presence and willingness to adapt with the times
“She’s kept The Safety Store on mission,” Stroup shared. “Cara and her team have grown the store’s capabilities to serve not only children, including children with special needs, but now people of all ages and abilities.”
The Safety Store’s legacy
No other national or international network is better positioned than children’s hospitals to provide families with the tools and education they need to stay safe and be prepared for emergencies. The Safety Store at Riley Hospital exemplifies this impact as the first children’s hospital-based safety store to serve all children, including children with special needs, with low-cost safety products and injury prevention education.
The store’s success has been made possible through the dedication of hardworking colleagues and supportive partners, including the Riley Cheer Guild, their neighbors at the Guild's Over the Rainbow Gift Shop and key leaders at the hospital and IU School of Medicine.
“Twenty years have passed, and we still remember and are eternally grateful to Riley Hospital leadership at the time: Richard Schreiner, MD, Gary Miller, PhD, Ora Pescovitz, MD, and Mike O'Connor,” Stroup shared. “They all believed in, supported and did everything they could to secure The Safety Store in a prime and visible location in the Riley Hospital Outpatient Center where many families would pass by on their way to and from appointments.”
The Safety Store staff hopes that the store will continue to grow because they have never lost sight of the store’s mission to make safety products affordable and accessible to all and it continues to explore all kinds of innovative ways to demonstrate proper product use for people of all ages and abilities.
“The Safety Store is special because it’s a place where you can go to not only buy a safety product at low cost but where dedicated injury prevention educators help you learn about and practice proper product use,” Hankins said. “You can also learn about other considerations to keep you and your family — at whatever age — safe at home and everywhere.”
The Department of Pediatrics offers a tremendous thank you to Karen Bruner Stroup, PhD, Linda Hankins, Cara Fast, MSW, and the entire Safety Store team for their 20 years of dedicated work to providing safety education to Hoosiers and their children.
The Safety Store has recently revamped their Safety Store Information Flyer in English and Spanish. Physicians, clinics and staff members are welcome to print or distribute these flyers to help get the word out about everything that The Safety Store has to offer.
