Thank you for visiting our shared resource repository to support children, families, and caregivers during this challenging time.

At the IDEALS Institute, we’re educational, health, social service, and public policy professionals, but we’re also parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. We are finding ourselves as overwhelmed as everyone else in the face of juggling our life and work roles. As such, we began an informal, internal crowdsourced collection of resources to share amongst ourselves. These are free, available-now supports, strategies, and tools to maintain learning and healthy development for our children, to support the wellbeing of our families, and to ensure we are taking care of ourselves. It became clear that a community repository of this nature would have benefits beyond our team. Please note that these are our personal recommendations and the list does not imply the endorsement of Johns Hopkins University or the IDEALS Institute. 

Join us in this effort. You will note the submission form to suggest additions to this list. We welcome any and all suggestions. Likewise, we are committed to continue to create and add additional resources – albeit with “natural” production values as we all work from now makeshift offices and studios. 

Here’s what we know: We will get through this together. There will be time to think about what should have been in place and what we can do differently going forward, but right now – the focus needs to be on maintaining as much consistency for children as possible; ensuring that all our mental health and physical well-being is preserved; and knowing that we are stronger together as a community that cares for one another than alone. Practicing safe physical distancing does not mean losing our human connection. We hope you find this crowdsourced collection of resources helpful, and we wish everyone stays healthy and strong.

Chris Swanson, EdD
Director of the IDEALS Institute
Johns Hopkins School of Education