A community’s capacity to respond to and recover from disasters is only as good as the services it offers to children when the worst happens. Sustaining child care and children’s mental health are particularly vital.
These were core conclusions of two recent Columbia Climate School Sustain What webcasts organized by the Resilient Children / Resilient Communities (RCRC) Initiative. The initiative works with six different communities across the United States and its territories to strengthen community resilience through a child-focused disaster preparedness lens. The work is led by Columbia’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness and funded by a grant from the global health-care company GSK.
The pair of webcasts focused on very different places. One session, in Spanish, highlighted the work of RCRC partners in Puerto Rico. The other focused on North Carolina. But common themes emerged.
Without sustaining child care in disruptive times, systemic risks ripple outward. Child care centers “are the engines of what happens in communities, the engines that keep the wheel spinning,” said Maryanne Ramirez, the early childhood coordinator for the Department of Family Affairs in Puerto Rico. “If families don’t have a stable place to leave their children, they also can’t return to work, and the whole economy is affected.”
And without monitoring and supporting the mental health of children, and caregivers, the ripples grow. “Child care is connected to mental health, is connected to economic rebounding,” said Mebane Boyd, RCRC community champion and director of the New Hanover County Resiliency Task Force, Communities in School, in Cape Fear, North Carolina. “It’s all connected intricately; we can’t do one thing without thinking about the other.”
The Resilient Children / Resilient Communities Initiative rationale centers on the importance of ensuring the continuity of services that children and families depend upon in the whole community in order to better respond to and recover from a disaster. The project aims to encourage and sustain systematic improvements in coordination and collaboration between child-serving sectors, local emergency management agencies and other community stakeholders.
An important pillar behind this approach is that federal- and state-level policies play pivotal roles in determining the resources and programs available to communities when disasters strike, and how quickly those resources can be brought to bear. Lessons learned from the RCRC initiative can serve as a model to help decision makers be better prepared to meet the needs of children during disasters.
The RCRC coalitions have previously convened a congressional briefing and visited Capitol Hill to meet with elected officials to advocate for prioritizing children in disaster planning. This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a virtual advocacy campaign took the place of the intended congressional briefing. The six RCRC communities each contributed insights, which were compiled alongside national data and trends to create a holistic understanding of the five top issues facing children in disasters; these were compiled into five data-driven thematic issue briefs, which are available in English and Spanish.
The five top issues identified by the communities are: child care availability during and after disasters; equitable broadband access for educational continuity; mental health resources for children; secure housing and child-friendly emergency shelters; and food security programs to reduce the incidence of poverty.
The Sustain What panel discussions, hosted by the Earth Institute Initiative on Communication and Sustainability, focused on two of the five key issues, namely the provision of child care during and after disasters; and the state of children’s mental health after disasters, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Recurring themes in the discussions included the ways in which children’s resilience is woven together with resilience throughout the community; strategies for helping children deal with and recover from disaster trauma; and policy actions that could help children and communities rebound after disasters.
Watch and share the video webcasts below:
Here are the key takeaways from the sessions:
On the connections between children’s resilience and community recovery: “Everything relates to mental health; the context where our children are in disasters affects them because they are adverse childhood experiences. … You can’t talk about mental health in isolation. You have to look at the context, the economic situation, access to resources and opportunities. All of these things have a direct or indirect impact on mental health, and not just on children. The issue is being able to understand trauma. We are going to see those effects [of trauma] in the long run.” — Yesenia Delgado, RCRC Community Champion, Puerto Rico
On direct actions we can take to help children recover from disaster trauma: “Recovery is not only going to depend on mental health services. They’re not enough. For there to be a real long-term recovery, we need to focus on all the spaces where children move about; how trauma affects childhood, how it affects learning, how it affects their memory and behavior. Mental health should not be reduced to a psychiatrist or psychologist’s office.” — Helga Maldonado, ESCAPE, Puerto Rico
“I don’t think we have any idea the impact this has had and is having on children until they get back into school and get back into the new normal for school; until there’s some time for it to play out. Next school year will be major. There has to be some specific plans in place, and we cannot miss the opportunities to help these children.” — Danny Stedman, executive director, Communities in Schools, Robeson County, North Carolina Emergency Management
“Change from seeing what’s wrong with the child to what happened to them. This next school year is really going to be monumental, and we haven’t seen the worst with mental health and COVID. It’s all connected. If the teachers aren’t well, it’s hard for them to help children who aren’t well. It’s critical that we take care of the providers.” — Mebane Boyd, RCRC Community Champion; Director, New Hanover County Resiliency Task Force, Communities in School, Cape Fear, North Carolina
“Our caregivers need more support in managing trauma not only for children but for themselves as well. … This should be integrated in university curricula and professional development opportunities, managing trauma, providing psychological first aid.” — Maryanne Ramirez, Early Childhood Coordinator, Department of Family Affairs, Puerto Rico
On policy actions we can take to increase childhood and community disaster resilience:
“Child care services are not listed as essential services, so it has been difficult. We need public policy to allow us to treat child care as essential services.” — Maryanne Ramirez, Early Childhood Coordinator, Department of Family Affairs, Puerto Rico
“Racism is a trauma; it’s a persistent, ever-present trauma for people of color. Working to eliminate micro-aggressions and policies that disadvantage communities of color are an important part of legislating the reduction of trauma. … We build our resilient communities not as the disaster is happening. We have to do it now, every day.” — Mebane Boyd, RCRC Community Champion; Director, New Hanover County Resiliency Task Force, Communities in School, Cape Fear, North Carolina
“What we can do to have more resilient communities is work on preparedness, and having inclusive emergency plans that consider the needs of children with disabilities. In the long term we need policies to allow community-based organizations to provide more of the services their communities need. … We need policies that put children first, and that pay special attention to children with disabilities.” — Myrnalis Castro, Services Coordinator, Movimiento para el Alcance de la Vida Independiente, Puerto Rico
For more resources on child-focused community preparedness, explore the Resilient Children/Resilient Communities Toolbox.
Antonia Samur is a staff associate at Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness.
Jackie Ratner is a senior project manager at Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness.
