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Early childhood services must have an emergency management plan as part of their licencing requirements.
The emergency management plan must be kept up to date and made available to parents, whānau and caregivers.
See the emergency preparation licensing criteria for your type of service.
Making and maintaining an emergency management plan
An emergency management plan is a requirement under the Health and Safety at Work (General Risk and Workplace Management) Regulations 2016.
Your service must maintain and keep the emergency management plan up to date. It needs to be shared with parents, whānau and caregivers.
The emergency management plan must have:
- emergency procedures
- evacuation procedures
- procedures for notifying emergency service organisations
- medical treatment and assistance procedures.
Our guide provides practical guidance and information for emergency management plans for early learning services.
Planning and preparing for emergenciesUse this template to prepare an emergency management plan.
Emergency management plan templatePandemic plan
Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, early learning services have to manage potential or real outbreaks of communicable disease. These include influenza, measles and Covid-19.
Pandemic guide for schools and kuraMataara
We use emergency contact tool Mataara to connect with early learning services as quickly and simply as possible.
We will text message and email your emergency cellphone number and email address if there is an emergency in your area. You must let us know if your contact details change.
The text comes from 8707. This number will only be used by us. You cannot text us first.
You can then reply to us with the status of your early learning service. The text message and email will have instructions on how to do this.
If we don’t hear back from you, we will quickly follow up to check on you.
Share your service's information with Police
Police use a tool called Realtime Intelligence for Operational Deployment (RIOD). This helps them to respond to your service quickly if needed.
To have your service's information added to RIOD, you can send them your:
- contact details, including important cellphone numbers
- emergency management plan
- site plan, including a helicopter landing site and where keys are kept
- shelter-in-place or lockdown procedures.
Plans will be saved securely and geotagged in the RIOD tool.
Email plans to: [email protected]
For more information, contact your local Police.
Email: [email protected]
Funding for emergencies
If you need to close your service in the case of an emergency, you may be eligible to receive funding.
