The family council

​Creating a Family Preparedness Council
We believe that one of the best ways to prepare at home is to make preparedness a group, or family, activity. If you have not already done so, organize your family into a Family Preparedness Council or Team. Consider all the members of your family, and assign roles and responsibilities to each one.
Benefits of a Family Preparedness Council
  • A working family council creates synergism. In other words, the united action of different individuals or family members produces a greater effect than the sum of their various individual actions.
  • Further, a council serves as a vehicle for teaching as well as leadership development.
  • As members participate in a council, they learn about larger organizational issues, see leadership in action, learn how to plan, analyze problems, make decisions and coordinate across subunit boundaries.
  • Councils foster understanding. And with understanding, relationships are strengthened and families can be revitalized and unified.
Experience shows that families who are organized, with critical responsibilities and tasks pre-assigned, can learn to be self-sufficient. Prepared families know what to do. Right now. They do not waste precious time figuring out who can do what. They use this time to save a life, reduce the severity of an injury, and lessen property damage. To empower your family to take care of its own needs following a major disaster - delegate the following critical responsibilities and tasks among family council members. 



Family Preparedness Council Roles
Some of these roles may need to be combined, depending on the number and abilities of the people in your council. But even if you have a limited number of team members, you should make sure that each of these roles is assigned to a specific person.
Click on each role below to see what that person is responsible for.