How to Prepare for and Respond to a Crisis (2nd Edition)

Is your school ready to respond to a crisis? Are school staff ready to address physical safety issues, emotional needs, and mental health consequences that arise from crisis situations? What steps can you take now to prepare your school for a crisis? Use the steps and guidance offered in this book to answer these and other questions critical to surviving any crisis that touches a school. Tens of thousands of school and community professionals have used this model, and you can adapt it to your unique situation. Whether you need to address a crisis in the school building, across the district, or throughout a region, the field-tested model and practical guidelines in this book lead you to answers that form a framework critical to controlling crisis situations. With an emphasis on integrating safety and security plans with mental health services, the authors show you how to use the talents, training, and knowledge of school personnel to coordinate a comprehensive response to any crisis. This model empowers staff to initiate and sustain a response to crises that answers the physical safety, mental health, and emotional needs of students, community, and staff. Sample plans, forms, checklists, and resources jump start crisis training, preparation, and response. How to Prepare for and Respond to a Crisis, 2nd edition, is based on the work of the School Crisis Response Initiative of the National Center for Children Exposed to Violence, which is part of the Yale Child Study Center. Dealing with the effects of a crisis on school children and staff is not the primary mission of schools, nor is it the reason why most educators or school administrators entered the profession. Not surprisingly, therefore, many schools do not plan for or prepare to respond to a crisis that might affect their students and staff. This book, designed to address this issue, covers: (1) the assumptions and logic underlying its approach to school crisis response; (2) presents a general model and practical guidelines to enable schools to prepare for crisis situations; (3) goes over the nuts and bolts of implementing crisis plans in the event of an actual crisis; and (4) provides sample plans, forms, checklists, and resources to be used in crisis training, preparation, and response. The response model empowers staff to initiate and sustain a response to crises that answers the physical safety, mental health, and emotional needs of students, community, and staff. Appendix A contains guidelines for developing a school crisis plan; Appendix B, sample notification letters; Appendix C, sample contents of a crisis information folder; Appendix D, sample contents of a school crisis kit; and Appendix E, vignettes for crisis team training. (Contains 26 references.) (RT) Preparing for a crisis The crisis intervention model Establishing crisis teams Responding to a crisis Providing clinical support The overall picture Appendix A. Guidelines for developing a school crisis plan Appendix B. Sample notification letters Appendix C. Sample contents of a crisis information folder Appendix D. Sample contents of a school crisis kit Appendix E. Vignettes for crisis team training.