DCRC Resources

at no cost to you

The Devereux Center for Resilient Children (DCRC) focuses on resilience building and social and emotional development. Our team’s partnership with you – the adults caring for young children – is incredibly important to us, so we’ve cultivated all of our resources that are available to you at no cost, and placed them right here. We know we have a lot to offer, so we hope this page provides you with more organization, as well as the resources you need. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

Videos and Video Playlists

Defining Protective Factors

What are protective factors? They are characteristics, people and supports that help a person get through tough times. They are our “umbrellas in a rainstorm.” Protective factors can be built and strenghthened over time. Our team’s mission focuses on building within-person protective factors.

Your within-person protective factors include your temperament, abilities and inabilities, skills and characteristics that make you who you are. Here are examples of behaviors that demonstrate “protective factors in action” for infants, toddlers, preschoolers and adults.

INFANTS | TODDLERS | PRESCHOOLERS | ADULTS

Complementary 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 on your way!

Printables for DECA-Infant/Toddler | Printables for DECA-Preschool

For the adults in those young children’s lives, we offer you a free tool as well: the Devereux Adult Resilience Survey (DARS) – English, Spanish. 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.

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 Early Care & Education 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.

Background/Technical Information: This page of our website contains numerous pieces of valuable information about our screeners/assessments, as well as our self-reflective survey tools.

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.

CAREgiving Checklist (English, Spanish): Pulled from the Your Journey Together (YJT) Curriculum, this checklist is actually for the families with whom you work. If you utilize the YJT Curriculum, this is one of the tools you can share with families so that they can reflect on their own caregiving practices.

For Head Start/Early Head Start

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! Go on and check it out!

For Infant/Early Childhood Mental Health Consultants

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! Head on over to see what we have to offer.

For Parents/Families

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

DCRC Blog

Things change every day, so our team remains dedicated to exploring and learning more about resilience and social and emotional health. What we find and what we’re learning and seeing out there – we want to continuously share with you! That is the reason we began the DCRC Blog. There, you’ll find articles from our own team members, as well as from a few guests. And guess what? We would love to have YOU as a future guest writer! So head on over and check out what we are beginning to build, and we hope you consider writing and sharing something with us.

OPEN BLOG

Library: Resilience Quarterlies

Be sure to keep up with everything happening with the DCRC team. If you’re not subscribed to our emailing list, yet, we recommend you do so if you want to receive our quarterly newsletters. Each quarter, we’ll update you on the latest DCRC news, spotlight upcoming webinars and professional development opportunities, provide you with some share-worthy articles and videos, and more! If you aren’t subscribed just yet, or if you just want to revisit a past publication, check out our library.

OPEN NEWSLETTER LIBRARY

Just a few more good things

These resources are available to and for all! Print and post a couple of flyers, or use a free PowerPoint presentation to spread the word on a simple strategy for transforming challenging behavior.

Pitcher & Cups Flyer: 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 flyer can serve as that constant reminder.

FLIP IT! Flyer: A wonderful, 8.5×11 in. flyer 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. Available in English and Spanish.

FLIP IT! PowerPoint Presentation: Want to spread the good word on this simple and effective strategy? Here’s your tool, free to use!

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!

Webinars on Demand (WoD)

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!

See WoD Menu