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Hi, I'm George Sheldon, Acting Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children
and Families.
September is National Preparedness Month and I am pleased to announce that the Administration
for Children and Families is joining the Ready Campaign in order to promote this important
event.
Launched in February 2003, Ready is a public service campaign designed to educate and empower
Americans to prepare for and respond to natural and man-made disasters.
National Preparedness Month is an annual campaign to encourage Americans to take steps to prepare
for emergencies in their homes, schools, organizations, businesses, and communities.
Preparing can start with four important, but basic steps.
First, be informed about emergencies that could happen in your region, and identify
sources of information in your community that will be helpful before, during and after an
emergency.
Second, make a plan, as a family, for what to do in an emergency.
Third, build an emergency supply kit, both for work and for home.
Finally, get involved, consider joining a Community Emergency Response Team or for short,
CERT or taking a class at your local American Red Cross or volunteering for your local medical
reserve corps.
Here at ACF we also have the ACF Emergency Response Readiness Force or ERRF which is
a cadre of ACF staff trained to be able to respond in the event of a federal emergency.
I'd like to ask you to consider volunteering for our ERRF team -- you can find information
on how to do that at the ACF intranet.
What does being prepared for a disaster really mean?
For you and your family, it means having an emergency supply kit so you can be self reliant
for at least three days in case of emergency.
It means having a plan for how you will respond and reconnect with your family and us after
an emergency.
For ACF, it means assisting our partners and our grantees to prepare for disasters and
having an organizational continuity of operations -- or COOP--plan.
These plans provide for maintaining critical operations, having redundant systems to back
up critical data and information, and developing communication protocols during emergencies
and disasters.
For all our grantees and partners, being prepared means staying informed, knowing how to get
information and alerts from local, state, tribal, and territorial emergency management
agencies, and understanding the specific risks in the community and preparing for those risks.
This week, you will be receiving a copy of a booklet that ACF has developed called "Taking
Care of Our Family." This booklet is a starting point for you to begin preparing your family
for a disaster.
I also encourage you to visit FEMA's website, www.ready.gov and the American Red Cross web
site to get more information on specific topics related to preparing for emergencies.
Throughout National Preparedness Month, you will be receiving tips to prepare and information
on disasters and tools to assist you in putting together your disaster preparedness kit.
In Regional Offices, I encourage you to reach out to your Regional Emergency Management
Specialist or in the Central Office, reach out to the Office of Human Services Emergency
Preparedness and Response to learn more about how to prepare for a disaster at home and
at your work place.
We're taking steps as an organization to become better prepared and informed, and we
urge you to take time to do the same at home and in your community.
Stay connected with our Office of Human Services Emergency Preparedness and Response throughout
the month via Facebook and Twitter. Visit our website www.acf.hhs.gov to learn more.