Page 64 - Creating a Community of Resiliency

Establishing a Foundation for Emergency Preparedness
 How to prioritize emergency funds or support when there are not enough funds or support for every child care program in your agency’s service area
Areas for Further Development
An area for potential future training and development is in the application of the new knowledge, including how to begin to collaborate. When asked their next steps for using the newly learned information, some participants reported intentions to collaborate. However, two of the areas rated lower for knowledge change were My knowledge of opportunities for collaboration, partnerships and My knowledge of what we need to do now to collaborate. The intention is present; however, the knowledge of how to execute this may be lacking, and staff may need support.
Although there was a change in knowledge regarding how to support the connection and communications between providers and emergency responders—and between providers and parents—during an emergency, when asked what their next steps would be, most participants cited sharing information, while collaborations were cited least often. The knowledge has been increased, but the R&R agencies may need further support to put these into action (not only through sharing of information, but through development of active collaborations). R&R agencies are experts in information sharing and dissemination to the community; this expertise may be relied upon more so than a different strength that is less frequently and widely used: establishing and continuing active collaborations.
A final area that might need more training is on how to advocate for child safety during an emergency. Although knowledge changed, some reported little change compared with the other areas.
Challenges
Some challenges that were cited in all three sessions included staffing, time, and money to implement the desired action plans. Future action planning sessions or training workshops should keep this as a focus, given that it was mentioned in the evaluation of all three sessions, showing its salience for the R&R agencies. Other challenges mentioned in two of the sessions included provider language and helping providers implement—not just absorb knowledge, but put the knowledge into practice. There were also requests for more training workshops like these for R&R agencies. One important challenge to work through is that of agency policies that might prevent the sharing of provider information with one another. This should be explored further.
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