Crisis Intervention Plans for Schools
The aim of crisis intervention plans is to assist schools in dealing with events by enabling prompt and effective responses to emergency situations, and by reducing the traumatic and ongoing stress in the aftermath of such an event. The first priority of a crisis intervention plan is prevention, but in the event that an emergency does arise, the plan should be thorough and contain detailed procedures to address the situation.
-
Events Requiring Crisis Intervention
-
Schools must identify the types of incidents requiring crisis intervention. Typically, these are unanticipated, catastrophic incidents which affect all or a majority of the student body. Examples of the types of qualifying events include natural disasters such as fires and earthquakes, evacuations, hostage or gunman situations, terrorist attacks, death of a teacher or student, and any other threat that directly targets the safety of students.
Crisis Intervention Teams
-
The crisis intervention plan should identify responders at all levels of the organization. There should be a school response team, comprised of teachers and staff members from the individual school. These individuals will likely deal with the emergent situation and the immediate crisis. Larger crisis intervention teams, made up of individuals from the school district and local community within the region, can help in the aftermath of a crisis. Community mental health providers, or the school district employee assistance programs, can provide counseling services to staff and students. District administrators may help to facilitate sharing of equipment, buildings and other resources in the event a particular school is damaged by a natural disaster.
-
Roles and Responsibilities
-
The crisis intervention plan must clearly delineate individual staff members' roles and responsibilities during a crisis. Phone tree information should be maintained, and staff should be aware of the order of the phone tree, as well as contingency plans if a link in the tree is unavailable. The plan should state who has overall decision-making authority during a crisis, who will serve as a spokesperson, who is in charge of communicating with parents, and who should report in the event of a natural disaster. Scripts or step-by-step procedures for general events such as notifying parents or evacuating the building may be a useful tool.
Situation Specific Plans
-
The plan should contain specific details about the procedures for each type of emergency situation. Handling an evacuation due to a fire will require very different steps than dealing with a hostage situation inside the school. For example, the evacuation procedures will need to include details such as the meeting point, entrances and exits from the building, who is responsible for checking the building to ensure no student is left behind, and who coordinates with the fire department. In the case of a hostage/gunman scenario, the plan should cover who will handle negotiations (ideally, only trained professionals or the police), the procedures for alerting the police, and what to do with students who remain in the building (remain in their classrooms with the doors closed and secured).
Post-Crisis Debriefing
-
The plan should not stop at addressing the crisis itself. It should also list contact information for available resources such as mental health professionals and community organizations who can work with staff, students and parents to process the events and deal with the trauma.
-
References
Resources
- Photo Credit emergency sign image by max blain from Fotolia.com
