Adhere to Federal, State, and Local Regulations

David: 45 CFR §1302.47(b)(8) says that all Head Start programs are required to have a disaster preparedness plan that describes their emergency management, disaster preparedness, and response plans.

Disasters and emergencies, as you know, come in all forms. Some disasters, like hurricanes, are naturally occurring. Other emergencies, such as acts of violence, are caused by people. Programs need to be prepared for all the possible disasters and emergencies that they may experience.

The regulations and the Head Start program performance standards can be found in safety practices and health program services.

Focus area two monitoring protocol Performance Measure 4.4 states that a program must have a disaster preparedness plan, and one of the things that work group has actually been instrumental in doing is really working with our monitoring team to get questions about preparedness added to our monitoring protocols.

During your focus area two Program Design and Management review, monitors will ask you if program leadership has established and follows an emergency preparedness plan. Reviewers will want to know if the staff have been trained and if they are conducting regular drills. It is imperative that programs have all — hazards emergency management, disaster preparedness, and response plans for likely and unlikely events, including natural and man — made disasters and emergencies.

In addition, there's concern about violence in or near programs, recipients must also review, discuss, and share these plans with staff, families, and community partners.

The next slide focus area two monitor and performance measure 4.5 1302.47(b)(1)(iii) states all facilities where children are served, including areas for learning, playing, sleeping, toileting, and eating, at a minimum, must meet current licensing that meets all state, local, and tribal regulations as required. They must maintain safe facilities that are free from pest toxins, substances accessible to children, and focused on safety hazards. Equipment with safety supplies that are readily accessible to staff, including, at a minimum, fully equipped and up-to-date first aid kits, must be in every classroom, and appropriate fire and safety practices must be adhered to.

The next performance measure 4.6. 1302.47(b)(2) refers to equipment and materials. The indoor and outdoor play spaces, cribs, cots, bedding, chairs, strollers, and other equipment used in the care of enrolled children, as applicable, must meet standards set by the Consumer Product Safety Commission or the American Society for Testing and Materials International. All equipment must, at a minimum, be clean and safe for children's use and appropriately disinfected. They must be accessible only to children for whom they are appropriate in terms of age. They must be designed to ensure appropriate supervision of children at all times and allow for the separation of infants and toddlers from preschoolers during play in center-based and finally be kept safe through an ongoing system of preventive maintenance.

Those are the regulations and specific aspects of health monitoring and federal monitoring protocols where monitors will come into your program and look for these things. We hope this is helpful.

With that, I have the distinct pleasure of turning the presentation over to my colleague, Mr. John Matthews.

John Matthews: We’re going to move on now to state regulations. David addressed the federal level of regulations. I'll now address the state and local level of regulations and policies that affect emergency preparedness planning for daycare centers, of which Head Start is part and has to comply with. Each state has different regulations. Links to those regulations are available on ECLKC as well as Google. You can find the regulations that control your disaster preparedness planning, and you need to make an attempt to comply.

They vary across the board, but in general, they have many major themes for the administration of childcare facilities to protect the health and safety of children during emergencies. This slide lists some of those common themes between the states.

They require you to have an emergency preparedness plan, as does Head Start. You need to have posted exit routes in your classrooms, common areas, and offices, escape routes that have ways to get away from your facility, and two meeting places. Emergency transportation plans. We had an incident in Hawaii, the tsunami warning, where the Head Start center's buses were located off-site and they had to evacuate the facility. This would come up in an emergency transportation planning process for your contingency operations. New contact information for staff and families in your plan. You need to have emergency lighting, food, and other resources for a natural disaster in your facility.

You need to identify the roles and responsibilities of your staff in your facility during different types of emergencies. You need to address drills and exercises and conduct them periodically through the year. You have to make sure that you can contact local emergency responders, even if your phone lines go down or the cell phone towers go down, and that's where we recommend satellite phones.

State regulations require disaster preparedness plans to include a discussion on different emergency courses of action and also have administrative requirements. They require you to have a plan for evacuation from your facility. You need to have a plan to relocate your occupants, and how you will care for children with special needs or who are non-ambulatory. You need to know how you're going to shelter in place, where in your facility you're going to shelter, and if that shelter is designed to withstand the wind forces of a tornado that could hit your area.

And then lockdown. Now we get into security for intruders. Can you control the locks on your exterior and interior doors? Can you hide your children? That needs to be in your plan. How do you notify parents? Administrative requirements that state plans require you to have is a communication system. In our guide, we recommend a communications hub, which is a central location where all communication takes place. That hub is transportable and includes a satellite phone.

The administrative requirements to provide medical and non-medical care during emergencies.

The types of emergencies the state regulations require you to address are very thorough, and childcare disaster preparedness plans must include these as required by the state. Now, your state may not have all of these, but there are a lot of them that will be required. Naturally, fire, flood, earthquakes, and extreme weather conditions will also include utility interruptions. Toxic spills. If a truck was outside and has an accident and has a chlorine leak, what do you do? How do you protect your children?

Plans also require you to address terrorist attacks, intruders, intoxicated parents, and so forth. Natural disasters and if they're within a 10-mile radius of a nuclear power plant, you need to have a nuclear evacuation drill and plan for your facility.

When it comes to local governments, they'll support their communities during natural disasters. They respond with critical services, repair damaged infrastructure, keep civil order, protect property, clean up and rebuild. And programs should ensure that they're coordinated and consult with local emergency responders and collaborate with local agencies in preparing their plans.

Prevention. The National Conference of State Legislators surveyed all the state regulations and databases and found no mandate that health care licensing requirements requires video monitoring. You're not required to have video monitoring for security purposes, but if you do, states will enforce voyeurism laws for the governor in their usage, it may restrict surveillance only in common rooms and hallways and play areas. And you will have to look. Parents know that it exists.

Mitigation. If you go to the point where you want to modify your facility, renovate it or repair it to reduce the consequences of natural disasters, make your structure more resilient. You'll be coordinating with your local planning boards, with your, inspection departments, at the community level, at the municipal level, at county level, and get them involved to help make sure that your, your modifications will comply with modern building codes.

In preparedness, your ability to respond to a disaster and the ability to get help from the community will depend on how well you've reached out to the Emergency Management Agency and emergency responders through agreements, through dual training with them. When you run your exercises and through your communication efforts, responding during the disaster, you want to reach out to them to make sure that you can be evacuated. If they have opened any shelters where you can relocate your children and staff. These are just examples and recovering and getting back to normalcy. You'll get volunteers and nonprofits to help you clean up and rebuild. The message here on the local level is to check to see what local laws and policies affect you, but also how you collaborate with various agencies locally and nonprofits to help you get through a natural disaster or a manmade hazard.