NECC Hosts Family Readiness Symposium

By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class (SCW) Paul D. Williams, Navy Expeditionary Combat Command Public Affairs

June 10, 2010 - VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (NNS) -- Navy Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC) hosted the 2010 Family Readiness Symposium June 3 and 4.

Nearly 300 family readiness officers, ombudsmen, Family Readiness Program (FRP) leaders and command representatives attended.

The symposium was designed to bring together command family readiness team members, service organizations and other stakeholders within the Navy and local communities. Rear Adm. Michael Tillotson, commander of NECC, said the symposium helps Sailors and their families share lessons that are often learned the hard way.

"As leaders, we must do everything within our power to recruit, train, equip and mentor team members to ensure a family support network that provides relevant services and keeps families informed on how to best access them," said Tillotson.

The two-day symposium featured keynote speakers Adm. J.C. Harvey Jr., commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, and Ellen Roughead, wife of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead. Topics included warrior transition, individual augmentee family support, social networking and operational stress control. Roughead challenged all in attendance to focus on preparing and teaching the spouses left behind to use the resources of the FRP to help get through deployments.

"The more prepared and the more knowledgeable a person is, the more they are capable of weathering any storm," said Roughead. "That's what Navy families do. It's the one thing that I see over and over again – we take care of each other, and we watch out for each other. We have a 234-year history of watching out for each other. Family readiness is new in the way that we are making new programs, but it is not new in the way that we do business."

According to Harvey, as family readiness programs support Sailors' families, they are also supporting the Sailors and the work they are doing for NECC. "There is nobody that does the myriad things that NECC does any better than they do," he said. "When they get the call, they support both the Sailor and the family whose Sailor is responding to that call."