Most emergencies are small. A house fire, an eviction, a power cut, a breakdown on the highway with a cooler of milk in the back. They do not make the news, but they separate a baby from a feeding plan just as surely as a hurricane does. And the people who catch them are usually already in the house: home visitors, doulas, community health workers.
On September 28 at Book Harvest, Love Anderson and Rachel Fann trained Durham’s home visitors and direct service staff, including Healthy Families Durham, Family Connects Durham, and Early Head Start home-based staff, on safe infant feeding in these micro-emergencies. Now everything from that morning has a permanent home.
One page for Durham families
Everything lives at breastfeeddurham.org/emergency, and any time under Parents & Family in our menu:
- How to feed a baby safely when there is no power or clean water, including preparing formula and cleaning bottles with a cold sanitation kit
- A one-page family emergency kit checklist, in English and Spanish
- A one-page resource list for families and the people who serve them, in English and Spanish
- How to sign up for Alert Durham, and who to call if someone in your home would need help evacuating
- How to stay together, with a family code word and a plan your child’s caregivers know
- Free emergency child care from the National Emergency Child Care Network for any family in a disaster or a personal crisis like a house fire, job loss, or medical emergency. Fill out their form online and trained volunteers come to you.
- Free feeding help from our Lactation Collaborative, at home or in our clinic
Home visitors: print the resource list for your visit bag. Its QR code opens the full list on a phone.
Share it with the families you serve, and with your own family. The best time to pack the kit is a quiet week.
En español: recursos para emergencias familiares, con la lista de recursos y el kit de emergencia en PDF.
Resources compiled by Rachel Fann, MS, CCC-SLP, CLC. The SAFE Infant Feeding Team is the emergency arm of Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities, the organization behind Breastfeed Durham.