Does your family have an emergency ID card in emergency bags or in school backpacks? Download these free printables to include in all of your emergency bags!
In the event of an emergency when you are not readily available to your child, do they have anything that they carry that lets rescue workers? Do they know anything about them at all? Sure, the child has a medical condition that may affect her treatment. He/she should be wearing a medical alert in the form of a bracelet or necklace. What about other identifying information such as your contact info, and their physical attributes? Be sure that the information really does belong to them. Or what about a card that you have to hand to a rescue worker when looking for your child during an emergency?
I’ve talked before about including photos in your emergency bags, but we’re going to take it one step further today.
How Can You Use Emergency ID Cards?
Consider This Scenario:
There was a tornado in your city and your child is at a rescue site, hanging on only to his backpack. He’s uncommunicative. His teacher is with other kids that also need help. But, your son still has his backpack. The rescuers dig through and find the printed. Laminate the emergency ID card that you’ve put into the emergency supplies that he carries all the time. With it, they can make sure that he is the child who belongs to the information on the card not only by the description but by the photo. They can see his allergies and know that he is allergic to penicillin and that his blood type is A+. And shows that he has no other known medical complications.
So, they can be one step closer to treating him on the spot, effectively, because they have that information. They also have your contact information so that you can be called quickly.
What About This One?
You are at a local amusement park and are separated from your young child. Even though you know that you’ve taught them to find the nearest park employee and wait, you still have to be proactive in getting help. Instead of trying to describe your child. Or showing them a photo on your cell phone that you only have. What if you had one or two of these cards in your day bag that you could hand to attendants to have more people looking out for your child?
None of the above scenarios are meant to spook you, I promise. But to make you think about how they can be helpful. Especially with younger children who don’t have a lot of vocabulary to share full information. Not only are emergency ID cards good for emergencies like this. But they’re good information to have in your Family Emergency Binder as well! We keep a copy of an ID card for each member of our family in our emergency car kit and in our emergency bags.
How to Create Your Own Emergency ID Cards for Your Family?
Click here for a free .pdf download of the Emergency ID Card printable
- With the .pdf version, just print off the form. If you happen to have some white cardstock, just insert it into your paper tray on your printer and print.
- Cut out cards. You can glue the paper onto a 4×6 index card for added stability if you’d like if you haven’t printed it out on cardstock.
- Attach a photo of your child to the box. The best photo is one with a great headshot. Use good glue.
- Press your child’s thumb into a rubber stamp ink pad. Then, press firmly in the corresponding thumbprint box.
- Fill out the pertinent information. While I did include a Social Security area, you don’t have to include that if you are worried about the card being lost.
- Additionally, flip the card onto the front and glue a photo of your entire family, and/or add other pertinent information about your child.
- You can take the finished cards to your local print shop or teacher’s supply store and have them laminated. Or, if you have a laminating machine at home, do it yourself! You can even ‘vacuum seal’ them into a vacuum sealer pouch if you have a Food Saver. Though they won’t be as easy to see or read because of the texture. You can even just put them into a freezer zip-top bag and remove all the air.
- Once completed, you can punch a hole and put it on a keyring for your family’s emergency bags. You can put it in a binder for your Family Emergency Binder, or into their backpacks and school emergency kits.
A Free Emergency ID Card Printable to Download
If you are handy with a photo editings program like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, give this a try: a free .png download of the Emergency ID Card printable.
You can download this .png Emergency ID Card to pull into your program. Then, fill in with your favorite font, and insert your own photo into the appropriate areas. Just print off and then stamp the fingerprints. Then proceed to add the photo to the back and laminate it if you’d like. Or, you could actually add a photo of your child and a photo of the family. Though they will be smaller in size to do so.
Extra: Misti from Your Own Home Store has created a full  Emergency Information Sheet that you can print out, plus emergency cards for your pets.
CLICK HERE TO PRINTÂ A COVER FOR YOUR FAMILY EMERGENCY BINDER
CLICK HERE TO LEARN HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN FAMILY EMERGENCY BINDER
Final Advice
I understand how some of you may feel like this is information that you don’t want readily available for someone to take. That’s a decision you have to make for yourself. So, we choose to have emergency ID cards. It is because we feel it is an important part of being prepared for an emergency.
Note: Please don’t share the link to the printables. But direct your friends and family here so that they can learn and download them for themselves. Thanks!
What else do you do to help provide vital information for your child when you’re not available?
Want more ideas for preparedness for kids? Check out these reasons why kids need to engage in activities that will help them be prepared for any situation. 10 Reasons to Learn Martial Arts, 7 Reasons to Take Your Kids Fishing, & 5 Reasons to Teach Your Kids Archery.
Tom is a Marketing & Communications graduate interested in nature, gardening, agriculture, and traveling. For the last decade, Tom has turned his hobbies into a full-time job, creating useful resources and guides for all our readers. If he is not working on his next article, you will find Tom spending quality time with family or taking care of his own back garden.
