Building a Responsive Regional Coalition of Multidisciplinary Partners During COVID-19

• In Event: The Importance of Relationships to Support Children and Families During COVID-19

Abstract

Building a Responsive Regional Coalition of Multidisciplinary Partners During COVID-19

Under the leadership of an NCTSN Center, the Northeast Regional Coalition was formed in June, 2018. The goals and objectives in forming this coalition with representatives from five states (Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania) will be described as centrally driven by the critical importance of relationships which prepared members to respond in a coordinated way to the COVID-19 pandemic. The process of engaging multidisciplinary and multi-sector public and private representatives and discerning who was “at the table” and who was missing, resulted in a targeted effort to engage the educational systems. A membership survey was conducted to identify the specialization areas and the professional development needs of the coalition that enabled the coalition to quickly mobilize resources and supports for emerging public tragedies, including the shooting at a Jewish delicatessen in Jersey City, New Jersey in December 2019, and soon thereafter, the COVID-19 pandemic. Another presentation in this symposium will describe a coalition survey of educators in the region designed to assess their concerns about the impact of COVID on their students, the students’ families and on the lives and families of the educators themselves. Parallel efforts unfolded to develop and create a large repository of resources that could be quickly deployed to coalition members, using a web-based platform (e.g. Basecamp), and members became involved in efforts in their own states to plan for the reopening of early care and education centers and schools. Representatives from the Regional Coalition participated in a national web-conference in late-August 2020, convened by the NCTSN Center to share lessons learned and resources in response to COVID-19. This presentation will review key lessons learned and resources that are needed including: 1) The need to build relationships and coalitions before disasters and terrorist events occur, so that system-building is driven by the emotional and neurobiological need for “connectedness’ rather than by fear, distress and the need to immediately mobilize and respond to danger. 2) The need to emphasize the non-duplication of effort, in response to the initial reaction by some of those invited who stated, “We already do this.” The “cross-border” connections, the abundance of shared resources and the regularity of meaningful and not-too-frequent web-gatherings, clearly prevailed as motivators of membership. 3) The development of shared-activities including a targeted committee on developing a guide on returning to early childhood centers and schools that were guided by principles of infant and early childhood mental health, and relationship-based considerations. 4) The need to strategically plan on how best the Regional Coalition can expand membership from the representative states and support the growth of emerging coalitions throughout the country, coordinated by the NCTSN Center.

Author

• Gerard Costa, Montclair State University
  Presenting Author