Disaster Preparedness

Planning for emergencies and disasters builds community and family resilience, supports optimal child development, and promotes healthy and safe child care before, during, and after a disaster.

The California Child Care Disaster Plan

The California Child Care Disaster Plan 2016 is an Annex to the California State Emergency Plan. It outlines the roles and responsibilities of key state agencies to support the child care infrastructure in an emergency or disaster. The overall goal of the California Child Care Disaster Plan 2016 is to reduce the risk of injury, loss, and destruction for children and staff in child care programs.

The plan supports child care providers to be ready for, respond to, and recover from an emergency. The resources in the Appendix assist child care providers to meet licensing regulations, Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) funding requirements, and best practice recommendations.  The California Child Care Disaster Plan 2016 is available in English and Spanish and is free to download.  Updates to the California Child Care Disaster Plan were made in 2020, and the updates can be seen here.

The Step-by-Step Guide for Child Care Providers section of the California Child Care Disaster Plan can be downloaded separately and used to prepare your facility for disaster.  It provides guidance to develop custom emergency plans based on individual child care program needs and local resources.  

The Emergency Plan Library section of the Disaster Plan contains all of the checklists, forms, templates, worksheets, and other tools and resources you will need to develop and implement your facility's disaster plan.

For individual files and resources included in the California Child Care Disaster Plan, including the Disaster Plan for Child Care Programs Powerpoint Presentation, see the table below.  Use the  menu to select resources in a particular topic area, for example: drills, Emergency Plan Library contents, or professional development resources.