Page 26 - Creating a Community of Resiliency

Regulations, Resources, and Toolkits
training curriculum, Emergency Preparedness for Child Care: A How-to Guide,27 which helps child care centers and family early care and education providers prepare for potential disasters, keep children safe, remain in business, and restore child care services. This is a model curriculum that all R&Rs should implement to support early care and education providers in their community. Many of the recommendations from this model curriculum have been incorporated into the toolkit created for the Creating a Community of Resiliency program and used for training child care providers.
A tool from the state of Maine—Y.I.K.E.S, Your Inventory for Keeping Everyone Safe,28—provides many ideas on how to create a guide that would be practical for providers in a specific area. The Y.I.K.E.S guide is visually appealing, not overwhelming, and easy to read. It is divided into eight user-friendly steps for creating a plan. At only 30 pages, it is easier for providers to use than many other lengthy guides that exceed 100 pages.
The website for the North Carolina Division of Child Development and Early Education 29 provides templates for emergency plans, emergency preparedness tips, security awareness, and health and safety bulletins for early care and education providers.
Project Security Blanket30 was funded by the Maryland State Department of Education to Chesapeake College and has easily accessible reference materials on-line. The college contracted with the local R&R agency, Chesapeake Child Care Resource Center, to manage the grant. This project provides training and technical assistance for Maryland child care center staff, family early care and education providers, and informal (not licensed) early care and education providers who attend a 6-hour course and develop written emergency plans for their programs. The Project Security Blanket website is a simple, easy-to-use resource that has drop-down menus for potential emergencies and disasters in their area; each topic includes guidelines for warning, preparation, and response for each emergency. This concept of having strategies for different types of emergencies inspired CCRC to create print materials with similar procedures for providers as a quick and accessible reference.
The review of existing toolkits included a presentation by Paul Myers from Save the Children , which has created an initiative called Resilient and Ready Communities. The initiative is designed to help at-risk communities integrate best practices into their child care programs to support children’s safety and well-being through preparedness. Save the Children’s goal is to make children a priority in every stage of emergency planning, mitigation, res ponse, and recovery. One of the potentially most effective aspects of this program is the focus on community resiliency and the encouragement to establish partnerships in the community.
CCRC reviewed a number of other resources that were found to be extremely technical and/or lengthy and likely to be overwhelming to child care providers. These resources guided the development of the CCRC training toolkit by providing examples of what to avoid.
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