Childcare Preparedness--in ID

Dear Red Cross. Thank you very much for the nice brochure that was left on my doorstep yesterday. Okay, I KNOW there are a whole bunch of new people in my building since the last round of disaster education. I HOPE some of them will read the stuff and of course I will listen for chatter on the breezeway about it. Personally though I am sorry to say I cannot read it. In fact, at least half the people on my hallway cannot read the pamphlets left on our doors. Some of us are blind / visually impaired. Some of us read limited English. Maybe I will give mine to RantMom at least.

RantWoman supposes she could have asked more forcefully how the recent campaign was going to handle the fact that people in the area the campaign focused on speak at least 100 different languages. RantWoman knows it's a nice brochure. RantWoman COULD have asked, but RantWoman has decided she wants a job where she does not have to talk about disaster preparedness 100% of the time. RantWoman would like a job with lots of other responsibilities where she could interact with personal and organizational preparedness in one initial push and then a couple times / year on a maintenance basis. RantWoman could also easily see that the endless RantWoman take on others' efforts could get, well, a little tiresome.

RantWoman hereby takes a break from disaster preparedness in Seattle to meditate about the state of child care center preparedness in ID:

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420ap_id_childcare_safety.html?source=mypi

RantMom had spells of running in-home day care centers in two states long ago so RantWoman is kind of hardwired to have interest in the daycare biz. RantWoman may even read the report referenced in this article. Yeah, right. RantWoman may ASPIRE to reading this article....

More to the point, during RantWoman's recent gigs doing disaster preparedness for low-income people, she often encountered people who asked questions RantWoman herself couldn't answer. When someone asked RantWoman about preparedness at schools, day cares, special medical providers, veterinarians, RantWoman without fail had to say something along the lines of "well, you need to ask the organization." RantWoman has anecdotal evidence that customers asking about preparedness is often a big motivator for organizations to take steps toward getting better prepared. So, even if you don't think your household is perfectly prepared, feel free to bring up preparedness for places you and your family go regularly and services you depend on. Even if you just find out what Plan B is during disasters, that preparedness will help you be better prepared.