Study Shows Childcare Workers Crucial After Sept. 11

Childcare workers played a crucial role in helping children and families deal with the aftermath of Sept. 11, according to a study conducted shortly after the attacks by professors from Georgetown in conjunction with the University of California at Berkeley. The “Who Stays? Who Leaves?” study of childcare workers in Alameda County, Calif., focused on the impact of the Sept. 11 attacks on 174 childcare teachers and providers and the children in their care.

The results showed that an unusually high percentage of childcare workers, although relatively far from the attacks, were “deeply affected by the attacks, dealt with serious feelings of vulnerability and stress among the children in their care and provided vital support to the children’s families in the aftermath of Sept. 11.”

“If this is the portrait provided from a West Coast sample, one can only imagine the experiences of childcare providers working in New York City, the Washington, D.C., area and the area surrounding Shanksville, Penn.,” Deborah Phillips, chair of the Georgetown Psychology department, said in a press release.

Phillips conducted the study along researchers from the Center for the Study of Child Care Development in the Institute for Industrial Relations with Marcy Whitebook, senior researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, and Joon Yong Jo, a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley.

The study showed surprising results concerning the childcare workers and the children in their care. Despite living in California, 13 percent of the childcare workers cared for children who had a family member or friend on one of the hijacked airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon or in Pennsylvania. Around 20 percent of the childcare workers reported that the children they worked with had expressed fears of being a victim of a terrorist attack. Twenty-three percent reported that the children had expressed more fears of being harmed or separated. Almost one-third noticed the children acting out scenes related to the attacks. One in three childcare workers said they worried that something would happen to the children in their care.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the childcare workers gave significant support to the children’s families. According to the study, two-thirds talked to the parents about the attacks, over 40 percent gave information about helping the children cope, 21 percent helped connect families to charities for rescue efforts, 11 percent referred families to professional counselors and almost 40 percent spoke with the children in their care one-on-one about the attacks.

Over one in five childcare workers held meetings about emergency response procedures, and a comparable amount expressed that their facility was not prepared to respond to a similar situation. Concerns about readiness and preparedness were more common among center-based than home-based childcare workers.

“These findings indicate a pressing need to enhance the access of child care teachers and providers — not only in heavily impacted areas of the country, but across the nation — to mental health professionals who are trained to provide assistance in the aftermath of disasters,” Phillips said in the press release. “They also reveal yet another way in which child care providers are a vital source of family support during times of crisis as well as day by day.”

Childcare workers across the country have been honored for their role in helping children and families cope with the aftermath of the attacks. In New York, representatives from 10 day care centers near the World Trade Center were honored with awards from the governor’s office, according to a June 12 Associated Press article.