Understanding the context

Early childhood crisis and emergency contexts encompass, for instance, natural disasters, climate-related emergencies, pandemics, displacements, and family violence. Such occurrences may disrupt children settled state and endanger their good sense of being secure and stable. In Australia, bushfires, floods, and cyclones put the safety of life above the local livelihood; just the 2019–2020 bushfires saw the killing of over three billion animals, thereby displacing almost thousands of communities (Royal Commission into National Disaster Arrangements, 2020).

Family violence is thus another equally major crisis context, with cases of partner violence recorded to be one in six for an Australian woman and one in 16 for men since the age of 15 (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2021). The pandemic showed again how health crises could disrupt the early learning process; it put a restriction on social interaction and also brought about more stress on children and families (Cloney et al., 2020).

Such an idea is useful from the theoretical standpoint offered by Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (1979) for understanding the disruption that one or another crisis might bring to the microsystem of family, the mesosystem of school–home relationships, and the exosystem of community resources. According to resilience theory (Masten, 2014), protective factors such as positive relationships, consistency, and social networks should be promoted to foster children's adaptation during and following crises.