ExchangeEveryDay Past Issues

We have a policy of 2 hours.
When we get the notice of a hurricane, severe storm, etc.. we call the parents and tell them they have 2 hours to get thier children or make plans for someone to get thier children.
If they do not comply, we do have the right to call the Child Care Association, as it was part of our policy.
We luckily never had to do so, most complied very quickly.

In case of hurricanes or other mother nature events, we tell the parents to look in TV stations for information about public schools in the area. If the public schools will close, we will close as well. We also notify the TV stations if we are closing.

In case of riots, teachers call the parents at home or work if they need to pick their child earlier.

All of these procedures are included in the Parent Handbook given to parents at the beginning of each School Year or upon enrollment.

We have several systems for communicating with families in a crisis or emergency situation. Each family is set up on an email distribution system which can be accessed by several people and from several different computers. In the event of an emergency, the families are notified by email of the steps the center has taken and what action may be needed on their part. The center has a cell phone in order to call families in the event of power outages and loss of phone service. Additionally, our centers have a nation-wide 800 crisis hot line that centers can call to report the emergency. Families can call the toll free hotline for information about the status of the center and updates on the situation as changes occur.

Although we still seem to function in the 19th century when it comes to technology, we are making progress on getting all email addresses of our parents to contact them quickly.

Being part of a church, we can also walk accross our courtyard and have access to two more telephone lines.

The most important aspect to communicating to parents is to have a system in place BEFORE the crisis.
When we have a small emergency ( such as a snow day closure) we have a plan in place.

Voice mail is changed by director
director calls all staff to notify of closure
lead staff notifies parents of closure
lead staff calls director when all parents have been notified
assistant director sends out email to entire membership ( staff and parents)

Should we have a MAJOR emergency
safey proceedures are reviewed annually at our general membership meeting
all parents carry with them a laminated card with steps for what to do in the event of an emergency/natural disaster. ( our out of state contact is on that card)
emergency cell phones are kept in each emergency backpack which also includes emergency contact information for all children and staff.

Our center has an Emergency and Disaster Manual that is given to each parent and employee. We also have disaster kits (3 large upright suitcases with handles and wheels) that are stocked with bottled water, diapers, wipes, toys, puzzles, bottles, first aid supplies, batteries, flashlight, etc. When we practice our monthly drills, these are rolled outside with us. We also keep a notebook with all childrens names, contact numbers for parents home and work, emergency numbers and numbers to all the local utility companies. We never go out without our cell phones. We have a designated safe place that we will go if and when an emergency happens.The way to stay safe and be successful in any situation is to be prepared, reduce chaos and attend to task. I tell my staff to maintain a balance og reaction and action. Both staff and children can do this by participating in lots of drills. (Even though its sometimes hard to take the time).

On September 11th and during the Blackout,cell phones immediately got jammed as did most phone lines. We then set up a Yahoo Group over the internet which parents can join and that has worked well for immediate information. We tell parents that we will try to call but taking care of the children is first. We have two emergency places we would go if the building was unhabitable and parents are required to find us. All emergency and medical information is with each teacher at all times.

We use our web site as an additional tool to communicate with parents.

We used a "phone tree": each teacher had responsibility for a small number (usually 6 to 7) of families for whom he or she was the primary contact. In a crisis, each parent was called directly using their emergency contact number. All staff members had the centerwide master list, their classroom list and their own portion of the list: their primary contacts. The director initiated the phone tree by calling the assistant directors who each called half the team leaders. The team leaders called the teachers on their team and each teacher called their primary contacts. To close the circle, when the primary contacts were completed, the teachers called their team leader, the team leaders called the assistant directors and the assistant director called the director. All 100 families could be contacted in about 15 minutes. In addition, we had a designated location about two blocks from the center as an indoor evacuation site in the event the center was the site of the disaster. Parents could call and come to the site when it was safe for them to do so.

Among all the (excellent) discussion about first aid kits, clipboards, cell phones, phone trees, and strong relationships with parents, safety officials and the media, I was touched by Julie Rand's comment that her emergency kit includes snacks - and books! - for the kids. What a tender reminder that the kids are why we're here in the first place, even (or especially) when dealing with a crisis or emergency.
When I taught in earthquake-prone California, our emergency kit included packaged snacks & drinks contributed by families (along with spare clothing & individual medications). To keep these fresh, once a year, we collected new snacks, and served up the previous supply at a "no-earthquake celebration!"

The teachers, office, and myself have the parents home, cell, work and family emergency contact numbers as well as email addresses. The teachers are able to pick up their folders and walkie-talkies before they exit the building. The office has the ability to place calls to all phone numbers using an automated phone tree. If phone lines are down then we will use cell phones.

Having evacuated an Infant-Toddler and Preschool center twice (once for 911 and once for wildfire), it is apparent to me that the strength of the existing trust relationship between parent and provider is essential to maintaining calm in a crisis. Parents respond to the tone set by their site leaders, that tone must NEVER be panic. Directors should rehearse evacuation drills and discuss contingency plans with staff monthly. Also, all staff are required to be First Aid and CPR certified

Developing a strongly respectful relationship with the licensing/accreditation agencies is essential to accomplishing a safe, legal evacuation. Both times, our analyst was outstandingly supportive and helpful, even admiring of our efforts to continue care services in off site locations. This encouragement was essential to staff morale.

In both these instances, I believe our center actually developed stronger parent-staff bonds and a greater sense of purpose and identity. We became the center that made it happen - and the gratitude of the families was worth every effort!

Before 911 we experienced the evacuation of one of our centers due to a bomb threat. From that experience we developed emergency kits (snacks, water, books etc) for teachers to take with them if evacuation is necessary. To communicate with parents we had to use cell phones. Emergency numbers are kept with teachers at all times.

We keep all of the parents phone numbers (home, cell, work, emergency backup) on one sheet for each class on clip boards. The teachers and directors can grab them quickly if we need to leave the center and all of the information is there.

We start calling all our parents immediately.We make all the phone lines available to our teachers and staff, and also make use of our cell phones,if required.

We are working with the local TV and Radio Stations. They will a lot of times anounce it over the air waves. We also in extreme instances have had the staff call (via the centers phones and/or using thier cell phones) all the parents in their room to let them know we would not be having school that day.

Extremely important - quite timely and should be applauded - I am proud to be a member of the Early Childhood Community. I am proud to be a loyal member of "Exchange" and look forward to your e-mails and your magazine. Keep up the very important work. The more research you do for the whole community of teachers, administrators - the more we learn the better our centers become. All the knowledge, experience and determination we have is always a plus for the children we care for - and about. I share all the information I learn with every staff member and it is always awareness and knowledge that will prepare us to teach the next generation of children. Thank You!

We have every parents cell-phone number, business number and of course home phone numbers. When we interview parents we tell them to call us if they hear anything that might suggest there may be an emergency. We also have a parent hotline - one parent calls another and another until everyone is aware of the situation.

This year we made sure we have a copy of the parent files for each of our centers off site so we could start calling parents right away from our admistrative office should any of our centers have to be evacuated. Having access to the customer database from a remote location assures that the center staff can concentrate on caring for the children while we are making the phone calls.

Our method for communicating with our families in a crisis is pretty predicatable; the telephone. For programs with families who have email, that would be an obvious route.

I have an emergency procedure for flood, fire and tornado's listed in with my policies of what actions will be taken to safe
guard the children in care. Other emergencies not listed above
are handled by contacting parents or emergency pick up persons at work/cell phones which are taken off of emergency listings which is right next to the phone. An emergency card for medical treatment which includes photo of child, parents signatures and phone number contacts is also kept inside of my diaper tote which I carry at all times when we go on outings. A Cell phone is a requirement to carry when away from the family daycare home.

Have a designated spokesperson
Never lie, if you don't have the answers then promise to get back to the questioner and then keep the promise
We have a phone tree among parents updated bi-annually to free staff to take care of the kids in an emergency
Have a disaster plan that is shared with the parents so they are aware of evacuation sites, plans etc.

Because we share space with a hospital we are able to use their communication plans. We can use the switchboard to make calls and the media center to alert the media.

We are a campus child care center, and over half of our parents are students at the college. In the event of a center-wide emergency, our registration department and campus secruity department can help us locate parents who are on campus, which frees up my office staff to concentrate on contacting parents who are not on campus. If I were managing a program that serves several parents who work for the same employer, I would contact their HR department with a list of their employees that we serve, so that in an emergency they could help us reach parents much the same way Registration and Security do for us at the college. Of course,we also ask all parents to give us as much alternative contact information as possible (cell phones, pagers, message phones, email addresses, and alternate people we can call in an emergency)

Commuication involves both sending and recieveing information in a manner that both parties are able interpret the meaning of information as sender intended.

Commuications should take multiple forms to ensure that parents recieve and make meaning from it. Check with parents for their preferred method of getting information, perhaps giving choices. Email, phone call, face to face, hard copy of the email or newsletter, bulleting board at the entry way - note in the box.

If you regularly use one method, change it. People become desensitized to emails, bulletin boards and newsletters if they are used so often that the information seems old and tired. Change it up -

CHECK for successful reciept - do NOT assume that parents have recieved the information or that if they did, that they understood it as you intended. Bi-lingual, native languages other than English, dyslexia, reading disabilities, non-verbal language delays - and other disabilities, busy schedules, various people picking up children for the family, ALL affect the sending, recieveing and interpretation of information.

Emergency Notification-

Have an emergency plan that ALL parents are individually made aware of. (if you come to the center and we are not there, you will find us at the ....(be specific).

Have an email list-serve of all current families that you use on a regular basis so parents are used to checking it. Keep it up to date and use it.

Have all phone numbers in one place to take with your or use without searching files. Test the phone numbers before needing them.

Create a phone tree withparents are able to participate. It is useless to rely on a phone tree (one person calling two, then those two calling two more) if anyone is not able to complete the task. These families can be the last recievers of the information.

I'm sure this isn't unique, but it seems to work. We require names and telephone numbers of both parents as well as three alternates for each child that must be updated quarterly. In an emergency, parents are notified by telephone. As popular as cell phones are, the numbers change and/or the service is dropped periodically. Parents don't always update our files as their circumstances change. We remind them constantly to update our records as their numbers/alternates change. It's not a perfect solution. I'm interested in reading other solutions in this article!

Our school is located in a wooded area. As an example for your article, this involves an all-school evacuation. Parents have been given this information in the parent handbook, as well as talked about at our fall open house. What we do: In the event of a forest fire, all children are evacuated from the school to a park 5 miles away (safe from fire). The two vehicles we use (a bus and van) have a notebook with each child's emergency information in it. Two things happen at the park. We call the local radio station to inform parents that we have evacuated to the specific park (which is in our handbook) and the second part is that cell phones are used to begin the process of calling each parent/emergency phone number.

Hope this helps!
Pamela

We have picked two off-campus sites where parents could find their children if we were caused to evacuate our building. These sites are within walking distance of our center but far encough away to be safe. We have notified parents as to where these sites are and to look at 1. first and 2. second. We had a bomb scare and had to evacuate quickly and had to have places to take our children until their parents could arrive. We now have this plan in order to meet this type of emergency.

On my application, I have included a line for each parents' e-mail address. The e-mails are then entered into an address book as children are enrolled. I have also organized group lists of individual classes, summer camp, etc. If I have a problem or a program change that affects only a class, I can e-mail them that group. If a situation is center wide, I also have e-mail access to everyone enrolled in the center. I do most of my correspondence with parents through e-mail.

When parents register their child for our school, they fill in an emergencly card. We added a place for their cell phone numbers to the card and have the parent highlight the phone number that we are to call first in case of emergency.

During our summer camp we average 125 children a day ages 1-12. A few years ago, the county was replacing the road and sewer lines in front of our school. They hit a gas line and we had to evacuate the building and reach parents to come ASAP to pick up their child.

The office had the attendance sheets from each classroom and pulled the emergency cards for those children. While the children and staff were outdoors, we had four people working the phones to contact parents to come to pick up their child. We contacted everyone within 15 minutes and the children were all picked up within 45 minutes. Being organized and calm in an emergency situation is definitely a requirement.

Included in our crisis plan is a type of phone tree. The teacher of each group of children has a crisis bag which besides first aid supplies, etc., includes telephone numbers of all their children's parents or guardians. They would contact their children's families.
We have three parents who work for our city's Emergency Medical Services Ambulance. By contacting any of them, they can directly contact the 911 emergency services of fire, ambulance or police to get the services we need. Actually they are monitoring crisis calls that come in all day. So they can hear if an emergency call comes from our program. We also have a parent who works for a television station. He is also available to help put out bulletins if there is ever a case of catastrophic proportions. We have a password that would be used in that case.
Using the resources within our program has been the best plan, as you can see.

Depending on the crisis, evertything from just a letter to phone calls to standing at the front door to personally speak with each family. But always the more immediate the response the better! Before rumors or gossip begins!

For an individual child, each day on a daily intake form, we ask whether a change in phone is in place that day. That is the first number we try, along with all other mother and father phone numbers on file (cell, office, etc). Then, we try emergency phone contacts, often a close co-worker or relative. Sometimes two or more staff members are doing different numbers. We also e-mail. If it is a center-wide crisis, we have group e-mail with all parents' addresses. In that e-mail, we ask that they inform other parents at the worksite in case all are not at their desks. Perhaps it is easier for us since we are corporate child care.

Depending on the situation, we would sent out letters, make direct calls or e-mails, or talk to each parent in person. If a crisis came up that needed immediate attention, I would contact my staff and Board of Directors, giving them each a list of parents to contact personally. We would make sure each parent was aware of the situation as soon as possible.

Directly depending on issue. Family or child specific with a phone call from the Director. Classroom or program specific: written note shared with those parents. Specific to several age levels: either individual phone calls (which was done when a 5th grader committed suicide) and/or written parent letters (also done to follow up with all grade school parents). Then counselors brought in for staff, then students and seperate notice to parents of their availability to meet with them.

We have an emergency email system. We also have a phone tree plan where, after the children are secure from whatever event is under way, administrative and senior staff call parents with a scripted message (careful to avoid overly alarming or panicing parents, being sure to give all the same information to everyone). We have practised for this - in addition to evacuation and "lock down" drills - and used this system twice under real circumstances (local bank robbery and telephone threat) and found it works pretty well but with predictable and also unpredicted consquences (for example one staff person having repeated the message to so many parents became too emotional to continue calling.)

We are located on a college campus. Our procedure is to, if need be, immediately evacuate to the college's Field House. We bring cell phones and copies of the children's emergency information - these are kept in binders near each egress. When we arrive at the Field House, the director and a member of Campus Security divvy up the emergency contacts, and phone calls are made from the field house. Another security officer will go through campus to contact parents who are in class. If we don't have to evacuate (e.g., when there's a storm coming or there's an electrical outage and we just need to close) phone calls are handled by the director and one member of the teaching staff, and security will go to parents' classes to notify them. We have always been able to get all parents or an emergency contact notified within twenty to thirty minutes, and children are picked up within an hour of the onset of the emergency.

We have a calling chain, where the list of parents are split between staff members, and we begin calling in an emergency. We also have what we call a "Safe house" for emergencies such as fire anything like that. The safe house is where we go for protection, out of the elements etc with the children when there is an emergency until we can reach the parents.

The Early Childhood Learning Center at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Orlando contracts with a company that notifies parents and staff in the event of an emergency. Each family and staff peson furnishes our childcare center with all of their phone numbers including work, home, and cellular. The contact information is entered in to our computer system by our office staff and saved on a disc that is sent to the company.

In the event of an emergency several staff have the contact information to access the company and we record a messaage with the infomation that needs to be delivered to our families and staff.

We activated two messages last year during the Florida Hurricanes and it was very effective. The message was delivered within minutes of my recording. In fact, if several phone numbers were listed each phone rang at the same time and delivered the information. I highly recommend this service and have listed the company's information below.

Saf-T-Net ALERTNOW
5510 Six Forks Rd. Suite 150
Raleigh, NC 27609
919-841-0175
Sales: 800-213-7168

When hazardous road conditions or other emergiencies occur and families need urgent information we send out a mass phone message to all primary homes or their place of business through an Automated Phone Messaging service.

We have a calling tree in place to reach parents in time of emergency. Each class in our center has a room parent. The director and assistant director call the room parents and they call the parents in their class. At the beginning of each year we give the room parent the work/emergency phone numbers for each child in their class. This list includes all contact names and numbers on each child's release list. This has worked well for us in the past. In the case of inclement weather closing, we also put information on local television and radio stations.

Post 911 the SECCC has had frequent opportunities to improve our ability to communicate with parents in a crisis situation. Although some of our methods of communication are confidential other more widely used methods include:
-separate information only line
-prepared statements for teachers to add to each classrooms'
voicemail (so they don't have to think about it)
-group email lists
-out of state contact listed in child's information (in case local phone lines break down as in 911)
-identified point of contact besides each of the above

Most importantly, I think we have learned that over communication is better than not enough. Because of the nature of our location each new famiyl receives a strong orientation to ensure their comfort level on a daily basis when they are away from their child.

We have pretty basic methods in place for notifying parents in an emergency...we send out a group e-mail, advise parents which television station to watch for further information and change all of our voice mail messages.

A bomb threat was made to our early childhood program on the first day of school, August 12, 2004. Because of monthly fire drills, the children, staff AND first day parents were evacuated quite smoothly. The local police, FBI and Sheriff's office personnel were full of praise for the staff.
The aftermath is where the communication with the parents came into play. I, as the Director of the Early Childhood Program, was asked to sit at the desk by the police to answer incoming calls. Word got out to those parents not on campus via parental cell phone use from the evacuation site. I calmly answered their questions to dispell rumors.
Days following the incident, our synagogue established a security committee, wrote letters to the all parents as well as investigated many sources of telephone/email communications to the parents. It was decided that in the future, should we God forbid have another incident, the synagogue admistrator will place a message on the answering machine and from the off campus evacuation site where it is safe to use the cell phones, the teachers would call their parents. A telephone tree would be established. Towards that end, all teachers carry an Emergency Bag with them whenever they leave the classroom. In this bag is their complete roster, every staff member's information as well as emergency supplies; cookies, juice, tissues, diapers.
We want to avoid parents rushing to the off campus evacuation site, avoid untruths, avoid hysteria while still assuring the parents that the staff is with their child in a safe place. It is that personal contact that teachers have with the parents that help smooth over the rough issue.

Here, as in all military programs, we have emergency measures in place that are a high priority to families in a war time and a hightened security status. The families are required to have a "Family Plan" in case they are deployed in an emergency status, stating their back-up plan for family care and child care.
We also have an emergency pick up list that they sign EVERY day when they drop off their children with whatever cell phone, work number, or back-up emergency pick up person that we can reach just in case. We are very vigilant that these numbers are accurate.
That said, sometimes emergencies come up such as floods, hurricanes, etc., and we find a way to be open for the military parents so that they can do their job, whatever that may be. We do many things to bring the stress of military readiness and the absense of parents into an arena of understanding and compassion. Especially in temporary separation and deployment, parents and children communicating with one another is a high priority goal. Because of our child care mission, emergencies are handled with practice and necessary efficiency as the very nature of military child care produces difficult times for families.
We are good at handling emergencies, and we have support from our commands and each other! Dare I say the military is a model for the rest of the nation?

Communication during crisis is critical. During an evacuation, parents are contacted by phone once we reach our secondary shelter. If we can stay on site, they are contacted with 3 of our 4 phone lines - the main line staying open for incoming calls. In both cases, two to three people are assigned groups of families to contact. We also set up an e-mail list so that we could send a message from any computer out to parents. This way parents may be contacted much faster, especially if they are the last on the list of phone calls.