PARENT MTG.3/19/07 BY Cindy Stramandinoli

YALECENTER FOR CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL HEALTH CARE NEEDS

EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS

Yale Center for children with special health care needs is part of a grant offered by DPH of Connecticut to develop emergency plans for all children with special health care needs. The Center has spent a great deal of time looking over a variety of plans and passports that would assist families in Emergency planning. We have learned from Hurricane Katrina the importance of picture identification and having a plan. Children with special health care needs are now integrated into the community and are not always with people who know them well.

Parents and guardians of these children, especially those who cannot communicate their needs have a responsibility to have written information on their child’s condition readily available to first responders and emergency personnel. These responders need to know what the baseline is for these children. The Yale Center for CSHCN has gathered resources to share with families and helps them gather the information that they will needs to create an emergency passport for their child.

We have developed brochures in both English and Spanish on the importance of emergency planning for all families and for children with special needs. The brochures discuss the importance of picture identification and the passport, which includes all necessary medical and contact information, including the out-of –state contact and why it is important to have one. The passport includes how their child communicates, amount of supervision needed, behavior issues, equipment, medications, allergies, what to avoid, what comforts, previous hospitalizations etc.

We discuss the importance of copying and sharing the “Passport” with schools, day cares, camps and recreational facilities. We discuss medic-alert, its importance and how the Passport will compliment and add to the comfort level of parents. We advise parents to make personal contacts with police and local fire departments, introduce themselves and make them aware of their child’s needs. We also advise parents to find out the emergency plans of their local schools, day cares and towns and cities. They should check with local hospitals to see where they advise residents on life support machinery to go during an emergency and what shelter will be able to accommodate their child and their needs.

We offer a power point presentation and assist our families in developing their passports by gathering information and scanning their child’ s picture.

We do outreach and presentations to Medical Homes, family support groups, school nurses and school based health centers.

A challenge for us is having the needs of these children identifies and integrated into the Emergency Planning of our local towns and cities.