Fort Drum earns DoD certification for military family readiness

Isabella Colello | ABC50 Now | Feb. 17, 2023

FORT DRUM, New York (WWTI) — Fort Drum has earned a certification for its military family readiness programs.

Earned through the Department of Defense, the military installation earned this certification after it met all national standards for its community support services.

Family readiness programming certification is a requirement for all Army installations and is renewed every four years, according to Fort Drum Public Affairs. But this was the first certification since Fort Drum Soldiers and Family Readiness Division was established in 2020.

Public Affairs explained that the Fort Drum Directorate of Human Resources’ SFRD offers essential resources to community members.

It provides services such as Army Emergency Relief, Relocation Readiness, Mobilization and Deployment, Family Advocacy, and the Exceptional Family Member, Financial Readiness and Army Substance Abuse program

This round of certification began six months after Fort Drum merged its Army Community Service and Army Substance Abuse Program, and also transitioned its services to the Soldier and Family Readiness Division.

“During that time, we were able to look at the services we had in place, regulatory requirements and the supporting documents that we had,” SFRD Chief Lorilyn Starr explained. “We had already begun to consolidate and improve in all of our functional areas.”

The SFRD also had to provide additional supporting documents and proof that it had no loss of services.

But Starr explained that there were several obstacles during the certification process as the Division was established and introduced to the community during the COVID-19 pandemic,

“The team had to put forth a great deal of effort to modify their services to meet community needs while maintaining health and wellness guidelines,” she said.

Fort Drum was also selected to participate in a pilot program that evaluated installations on more rigorous Department of Defense standards.

“This process really serves as a quality assurance and utilization assessment,” Starr added. “Failure to obtain certification can potentially lead to the degradation of services and a decrease in funding. It also provided a platform in which to showcase the benefit of merging the two programs and realigning services. We essentially did more with less.”

Starr credited Family Resource Center Operations Officer Rich Stepanek and Employee Assistance Program Coordinator Christine Robinson with helping in the certification process.

“It has been a remarkable experience helping to develop the SFRD for our community, and I was honored to be a part of the certification process,” Stepanek said. “It means a lot to the entire team to achieve certification and I know, going forward, we will continue to provide the highest quality of life programming and services for our Soldiers, family members, retirees and civilians at Fort Drum.”

The organizations were consolidated at the Family Resource Center and the Soldier and Family Readiness Center.