Earthquakes, Hurricanes, and Other Crises: How Can We Protect Young Children During an Emergency?

Recent earthquakes in Latin America remind us of a reality we cannot ignore: natural disasters, health emergencies, and other crises will continue to be part of life in our countries. In the region, 1 in 3 children is exposed to at least three overlapping hazards associated with natural disasters, and young children face particularly high risks to their health and development.

During the first five years of life, the brain, lungs, and immune system are still developing and are especially sensitive to the environment. When adversity is intense, frequent, or prolonged, the stress response can become toxic, especially when children do not have an adult to help buffer its effects.

Emergencies can also disrupt the care children need to reach their full potential. The closure of childcare centers, preschools, and parenting programs interrupts essential services, while caregivers’ stress and anxiety at home can make responsive interactions more difficult, reduce opportunities for play and learning, and contribute to greater use of violent discipline. These challenges are compounded by difficulties accessing food and the spread of disease. As a result, disasters and other shocks during early childhood can have lasting consequences, particularly for the most vulnerable households.

In this context, early childhood development services play a central role. Childcare centers and parenting programs provide children and caregivers with spaces for learning, sensitive and responsive interactions, support, and reassurance that help mitigate the effects of adversity. At the IDB, we support this effort by providing countries with technical assistance to improve these services and make them more resilient to crises.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, several countries adapted their early childhood development services to hybrid delivery models, some of them based on the Reach Up Parent Manual. The manual proposes simple play and language activities that can be incorporated into daily routines and shared with caregivers through phone calls, text messages, WhatsApp, or other communication channels.

Ecuador went one step further: with IDB support, it developed a Virtual and Hybrid Service Delivery Protocol (PAVS, for its Spanish acronym), with detailed activities, scripts, and guidelines to maintain support for families when in-person activities were suspended. Parents took on a more active role in learning activities at home, while early childhood teams provided remote support and, whenever possible, home visits. During the pandemic, PAVS reached 288,000 families.

The value of PAVS in Ecuador extended beyond the pandemic, and it became an established tool for ensuring service continuity in various crisis contexts. Since then, it has been activated during the 2021 prison crisis, the 2022 social protests, and the 2024 declaration of an internal armed conflict. In addition, in response to the threat posed by El Niño, it was expanded to provide services in temporary shelters. As part of this process and in collaboration with UNICEF, the protocol incorporated guidance on providing emotional support to families, self-care strategies for frontline staff, and mechanisms for remote cascade training.

This experience demonstrates that the capacities developed during one emergency can provide the foundation for a better and faster response to the next.

Emergencies can affect the mental health of children, caregivers, and the staff who provide services. Timely psychosocial support can help them cope more effectively with the emotional effects of a crisis.

In early childhood, this support is provided primarily through the adults who care for the child. Maintaining predictable routines, encouraging play, and using adapted books or materials that reflect what the child is experiencing can help children better understand what is happening and regain a sense of security.

Caregivers, both at home and within early childhood development services, also need support to manage stress and strengthen their emotional well-being. In this context, self-care is essential to supporting those who care for others.

Ensuring service continuity requires action before, during, and after an emergency. Before an emergency, it is essential to identify risks, build the capacities of teams, communities, and families, and develop protocols that enable a rapid response. But preparation alone is not enough. During an emergency, services must adapt to remain operational. During recovery, the challenge is to improve services and reduce vulnerability to future events.

Throughout this cycle, two elements are essential:

• Coordination among early childhood development services, the health, education, and social protection sectors, and disaster risk management systems to provide an effective and efficient response.
• Psychosocial support, which must be understood as a cross-cutting component of preparedness, response, and recovery.

These issues were recently discussed at the Regional Policy Dialogue on Adaptive Social Protection and Disaster Response in the Caribbean, held in Barbados. During the event, we also presented a guide developed by the IDB that outlines concrete measures to strengthen the resilience of early childhood development services. We will share this guide in an upcoming blog post.

As we noted at the outset, crises will continue to occur. That is why protecting children cannot begin only after an emergency is already underway: it must be built into how our systems prepare today.

To learn more about how the Inter-American Development Bank supports countries in improving early childhood development services and about its recommendations for building more resilient systems, we invite you to read our Early Childhood Development Sector Framework.