Free Resource Library
Our partnership with you, the adults working with and caring for young children, is incredibly important to us. That is why we have cultivated all of our resources that are available at no cost to you and placed them right here on this page, our Free Resource Library. We know we have a lot to offer, so we hope this library provides you with what you’re looking for. If not, we encourage you to contact us!
DCRC YouTube Channel
Our YouTube channel brings you videos that will help you get to know our team and what we do and offer; videos that share guidance and tips for promoting resilience and social-emotional health (in young children and in the grown-ups that care for them); videos that share information about our resources; how-to videos for use of our web-based assessment system; and more!
Defining Protective Factors
What are protective factors? They are characteristics, people, and supports that help a person get through tough times. They are like our umbrellas in a rainstorm. Our team’s mission focuses on building protective factors found within each and every person, including both children and adults.
Protective factors within a person include social and emotional skills that can be taught, practiced and learned. Here are examples of behaviors that demonstrate “protective factors in action” for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and adults.
INFANTS | TODDLERS | PRESCHOOLERS | ADULTS
Spanish: INFANTS | TODDLERS | PRESCHOOLERS | ADULTS
Free Tools for DECA Program Users
Does your program utilize the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA)? This nationally standardized, valid and reliable assessment helps strengthen protective factors in young children. Both professionals and parents/family members can complete an assessment of a child, and can partner together to promote that child’s resilience and social-emotional development. If you or your program currently uses the DECA Program, we offer you several downloadable/printable resources to help you on your way!
Adult Resilience Tools
For the adults in those young children’s lives, we offer you the Devereux Adult Resilience Survey (DARS). This self-reflective tool provides adults with information about their strengths, which they can then use to build on those strengths. Additionally, if you are in a position of leadership, we offer the Devereux Resilient Leadership Survey (DERLS). This tool provides you with information about your resilient leadership skills, how to promote your team’s resilience, as well as your own resilience as a leader.
Devereux Adult Resilience Survey (DARS)
Sample Resilience-Building Strategies
A resilient person has “the ability to recover from or adjust to misfortune or change.” This person is able to cope with stress and risk factors (negative influences), and has a solid amount of protective factors. DCRC’s work aims to promote resilience in infants, toddlers, preschoolers and the adults in their lives. Promoting resilience involves reducing risk factors and strengthening protective factors. Not long ago, some of our team members put together their favorite resilience-building strategies. Check ’em out!
INFANTS | TODDLERS | PRESCHOOLERS | ADULTS
For Child-Serving Professionals
Our team’s mission is built to go through those professionals caring for young children. That includes teachers, directors, administrators, teaching assistants, consultants, specialists – any professional charged with the care of a young child. In addition to the plethera of resources available to you for a price, our team also wants to ensure we help you understand and fully take advantage of those said resources, with the help of these free ones.
DECA Background & Technical Information: This page of our website contains the numerous pieces of valuable information about our screeners/assessments for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.
DECA Program Readiness & Reflection Tool: This tool is designed for leadership teams to utilize prior to implementing our DECA Program. It can help programs properly prepare, and ensure that implementation takes off successfully.
Web-based DECA (Free Demos, Guides, Sample Reports): That’s right! If you don’t know already, you can implement the DECA Program using our web-based system, called the e-DECA. There is plenty of stuff on this web page to help you learn about and explore it a bit. You can also learn about the Conscious Discipline e-DECA.
Alignment Tools: Our resources are developed to complement and enhance resources and systems that programs already use to support children and families. To that end, we offer documents which illustrate ways that our resources align with various curricula, assessments and standards.
DCRC Blog: The DCRC Blog is for any adult working with and caring for young children (birth through five). It consists of posts about resilience, social and emotional well-being, how you can promote both in young children and in yourself, and more related topics!
Head Start & Early Head Start Support
Since the first publication of the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment, Head Start and Early Head Start programs across the country have used the assessment and our program resources to meet several performance standards, and ultimately to improve their quality of services.
We so appreciate working with many Head Start and Early Head Start professionals, that we designed a web page specifically for them. Check it out!
IECMHC Support
The Devereux Early Childhood Assessment was designed with the specific intent to bridge the worlds of early childhood development and mental health, providing a common language that is strength-based, family friendly and developmentally appropriate. Since more and more infant and/or early childhood mental health consultants are using our tools and resources, we thought it best to design a web page just for them. Check it out!
Parent & Family Resources
If you are a parent or family member of a young child, or if you’re an early childhood professional who shares information with parents/families, this section is for you! While our team’s work is primarily designed with professionals in mind, we do offer free resources that parents and families can utilize at home.
Activities for Infants & Toddlers | Activities for Preschoolers
Webinars On Demand
Last, but certainly not least, don’t forget about our menu of on-demand webinars. There, you’ll find our most popular topics available for you to view for free! Please note, however, that certificates are not provided for viewing these recordings. Be sure to keep up with any upcoming live free sessions!
Extra Goodies
These resources are available to and for all! Print and post a couple of posters, use a free PowerPoint presentation to help introduce/explain the DECA Program to others, or use another free PowerPoint presentation to spread the word on a simple strategy for transforming challenging behavior. We also offer some mindfulness activities that our team has done ourselves, and much more!
Pitcher & Cups Poster: In our world, we like to think of children as cups and the adults in their lives as pitchers. Every day, adults are “pouring” resilience and social-emotional learning into young children. Remember: Resilient children need resilient adults. Hopefully, this poster can serve as that constant reminder.
Cups/Pitcher/Well Poster (The Path of Resilience): A couple years back, our team designed a free resource that explained our “pitcher and cups” analogy (see item above). Since that time, we realized that this resource was missing another important piece. The “well” is that other piece, which we like to use to describe the leaders in the early care and education field. Anyone in a position of leadership who provides support to those working with young children can think of themselves as the “well,” where the “pitchers” go to be refilled. This role is just as important, and so, we created this new poster with the “well” included. Download your copy now!
DECA Program (Birth through Five) PowerPoint Presentation: Designed to help you introduce and explain the DECA Program to others (colleagues, parents/families, funders, etc.).
FLIP IT Poster: A wonderful, 8.5×11 in. poster that outlines the four steps of the FLIP IT strategy. Print and post it somewhere you can always see it, as a reminder that you can help young children develop socially and emotionally, while also reducing their instances of challenging behavior. Also available in Spanish.
FLIP IT PowerPoint Presentation: Want to spread the good word on this simple and effective strategy? Here’s your tool, free to use! Also available in Spanish.
Mindfulness-at-Work Activities: Mindfulness is the act of paying attention to the present moment in an accepting, nonjudgmental way (Schultz, Ryan, Niemiec, Legate, & Williams, 2015). It is a simple practice available to all. Research has shown it is also a reliable method for reducing stress, including at work (Malinowski, & Lim, 2015). Check out some mindfulness activities our team has completed at our staff meetings, found by our own Nefertiti Poyner!
Just picture it! Resilience through Our Eyes: If you know our team well, you know that we are very visual people. You’ve heard us talk about rubber bands, umbrellas, rainstorms, cups, pitchers…and much more. That is because we feel it makes it simpler to both understand and to help others understand the importance of resilience. Since we do use many visuals and metaphors, we wanted to create this infographic that displays our most commonly used images that help us to picture resilience and the important role it plays in the lives of young children and adults. We invite you to download this infographic, print it out, frame the pages, or maybe just post them on a bulletin board or wall.
Team-Building Activity Ideas: Our team put together this collection of team-building activity ideas. There are many to choose from, so we encourage you to explore this resource and select ones that might be a good fit for your team, and maybe one or two that may seem out of your wheelhouse. Isn’t it healthy to try new things now and then? Give these activities a try during your next team meeting, perhaps even starting the meeting with an activity. These can serve as great icebreakers, and overall, can help you to create a culture of resilience in your team.
