Lessons Learned for Protecting and Educating Children after the Gulf Coast Hurricanes

Natural disasters are something that any of us cannot control or prevent from happening. The best thing is just to prepare when they are predicted to come. Natural disasters can cause people to be left without a home, schools, communities, neighborhoods, can be destroyed. Natural disasters can leave people to figure how their future will turn out. According to the article many children and families were greatly affected by Hurricane Katrina. These events can cause children to question their parent of why these terrible events happen. It can also raise questions in the minds of parents and officials. Worries about safety, continued education, jobs, missing families, and homelessness can raise questions and many concerns.

The article discusses the disaster plans that could improve protecting children. In this plan school can open earlier when school personnel to coordinate how resource will be allocated. With school in session, the community can continue in other improvements after the storm. Child welfare services cad provide needed services to foster parents. The article focuses on the challenge of locating missing children. Children were separated from their parents and were sent to shelters. The NCMEC is responsible for helping children to reunite with their families. With special delivery challenges, all out of state foster families were managed by caseworkers in Louisiana with nearly any supervision by the case workers. Foster families who stayed out of state were hit with problems of having their health services and medication accepted. During great chaos, levels of stress are heightened and this can cause for more protective service intervention. Some foster parents were unable to handle the situation of the hurricane and returned children back to the agency. There was great concerned about how the aftermath of the storm would be funded. These would help with recovery efforts.


Gao. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06680r.pdf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJS_Q53tSHE
This is a link to a trailer on youtube called "Katrina's Children." It is a documentary on children affected by Katrina.