Summer is winding down and school will be starting soon. That does not mean we are clear of the dog days of summer just yet. As the summer heat continues, it is important to remain alert to children and car safety. The U.S. Department of Transportation has indicated that heatstroke is the number one cause of vehicle-related deaths of children, outside of car crashes. Are you familiar with the signs and symptoms of heatstroke? Would you know how to help if you found a child in a hot car?

You’ve seen it on the news. Every year as temperatures across the country rise, quiet children are forgotten in hot cars. The result is serious injury or death and families that are changed forever.

Guest writer Lisa G. Kropp is the Youth Services Coordinator at the Suffolk Cooperative Library System in Bellport, NY and a member of the Association for Library Service to Children’s Liaison with National Organization Committee.

La escritora invitada, Lisa G. Kropp es la Coordinadora de Servicios Juveniles del Sistema Cooperativo de Bibliotecas de Suffolk en Bellport, NY y es un miembro del Comité de Intermediarios entre la Asociación para Servicios de Bibliotecas para Niños y Organizaciones Nacionales.

On Monday, I joined President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden at the Omni Hotel in Washington, D.C. for the first ever White House Summit on Working Families. The place was packed with policymakers, business and labor leaders, economists, reporters and their cameramen, and of course many advocates for working families, including parents and small business owners from across the country. The sum of us gathered for opening remarks with the same questions on our minds: What will it take to help working families succeed in the 21^st century workplace, and how can we, as a nation, make it happen?

On Tuesday, June 10, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Related Agencies held a markup on the Fiscal Year 2015 spending bill for the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill.