Crisis Planning - Getting Started

Getting Started

How Do I Get Started?

A mandate for crisis planning is necessary from the top down. The school superintendent should hold building principals accountable for crisis planning and school safety. It is important that each school review any crises with which they have already dealt and consider these key questions:

• What worked well?

• What did not work?

• What did we learn?

• How can we prevent a crisis of this type in the future?

Crisis planning involves hard work and there is no shortcut. Many schools simply want to copy another school's plan or send out a listing of crisis team members. Each school needs to do the homework and spend time on crisis planning. Everyone needs to understand his/ her role.

What Theoretical Model Should Guide Crisis Planning?

Using Caplan's model, there are three levels of crisis intervention:

Primary Prevention: activities designed to prevent a crisis from occurring.

Secondary Prevention: steps taken in the immediate aftermath of the crisis to minimize the effects.

Tertiary Prevention: provides long-term follow-up to those most affected.

What Are the Leading Causes of Death for Children?

1. Accidents

2. Homicide

3. Suicide

Unfortunately, the annual death rate is 1 in 1,000 high school students, 1 in 3,000 junior high students and 1 in 4,000 elementary students. Emphasizing primary prevention activities means creating curriculum programs to address the leading causes of death, including programs in:

• Safe driving
• Bicycle safety
• Gun safety
• Decision-making
• Anger management
• Violence prevention
• Suicide prevention

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