Family readiness officers go high-tech

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Jose Padilla, the family readiness officer for Combat Logistics Regiment 27, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, talks to Pfc. Emily O'Neil, a food service specialist with CLR-27, about the regiment's upcoming Family Readiness Nights. A new Internet-based tool to forward deployment news to families back home is catching on. More than 50 percent of the Marine Corps’ family readiness officers are using the system, and it will be expanded throughout the Corps by the end of 2009.


Family readiness officers go high-tech
By Trista Talton - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Mar 14, 2009 10:46:14 EDT

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — More than half of the Corps’ family readiness officers are using a new Internet-based tool to pass the latest deployment news, scrapping the traditional key volunteer-to-spouse phone call.

“When we utilized call trees, it just goes every which way,” said Kelly Cotton, family readiness officer for the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit. “The initial message is never what gets passed down all the way.”

The 26th MEU, now making its way back to Camp Lejeune, N.C., after a six-month deployment to the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf areas, was the first to use the mass communications tool, which officials are calling “MCT.” The Corps has 254 FROs using the system, according to information provided by Lt. Col. Craig Kilhenny, branch head for Family Readiness programs in Quantico, Va.

The 103 remaining FROs in the Corps should be trained and running the mass communications tool by the end of March, he said. Commands without an FRO are expected to have someone hired and trained on the program by Oct. 1.

About 128,000 Marines, spouses, family members and friends currently receive messages through the mass communications tool.


Rest of article at: http://marinecorpstimes.com/news/2009/03/marine_fros_031409w/%2e