November celebrates National Adoption Month across the country. The month focuses on raising awareness about adoption, educating communities about the challenges and myths around adopting children, and draws attention to thousands of children in foster care who need good homes.

If you’re thinking about adopting a child:

• Educate yourself on common adoption myths and how to make the process the easiest for you
• Know that on average, it takes a year from the time you contact an adoption agency to the time a child is placed with you
• Remember there are several steps in the adoption process, including: completing an adoption home study, getting approved, and being matched with a child
• Have appropriate expectations and avoid judgments based on information you’ve read.

Learn more about adoption in the United States.

November is recognized as Military Family Month. It is a time to celebrate and honor service members and their families and thank them for their sacrifice to our country. These are just a few of the many resources available to help military service members and their families:

• Deployment Guide: This interactive resource is a free tool for service members of all branches and their families to use while preparing for deployment, during deployment, and when returning home from deployment.
• Combat Stress: Operation Enduring Families provides a five-step educational and support program for veterans and their families after they return from combat. The program includes sessions on family relationships, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, communication and intimacy and anger. The sessions strive to address challenges, offer resource and garner hope.
• Child Care: While a family member is deployed, the spouse at home can feel an extra burden of child care. The Department of Defense (DoD) offers child care services for family members to help them get affordable and quality child care. The DoD currently has over 800 child care centers and oversees family programs across the country.

Find more resources for military families.

Learn about advance directives and make a plan.

If you can’t afford to pay your winter heating bill, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) may be able to help with:

• Home energy bills
• Energy crisis
• Weatherization and energy-related home repairs

Assistance is available to low-income families who spend a large portion of income on home heating and cooling.

Contact your state or Indian tribe or tribal organization agency for eligibility requirements and to apply. For help applying, you can also call 1.866.NRG.NEAR (674.6327)

By Kathy Greenlee, Administrator, Administration for Community Living and Assistant Secretary for Aging, HHS

What began as a celebration of family caregivers during the week of Thanksgiving in 1997 has grown into a month-long acknowledgement and celebration of family caregivers—those extraordinary people who make such a difference in the lives of their loved ones. Family caregivers provide more long-term care in our country than any other group, by far.

Family caregivers’ roles vary greatly, ranging from transportation, meal preparation and housekeeping to more complex help, such as medication management, wound care, and financial planning. What’s more, family caregivers are often the single constant in lives fraught with rapid change and uncertainty. Their commitment may be the only thing preventing the long-term institutional placement of medically fragile people. Supporting family caregivers is essential.

The Administration for Community Living (ACL) is proud to support the innovative Lifespan Respite Care Program, which provides states the opportunity to improve access to respite services for family caregivers, no matter the age of the person they are caring for.

State-based Lifespan Respite Care Programs are coordinated systems of accessible, community-based services for family caregivers of people with special needs, no matter their age.

For the past 12 years, the Administration on Aging, now part of ACL, has funded states to provide support to caregivers of people who are 70 years and older through the National Family Caregiver Support Program (NFCSP).

NFCSP supports state programs that include:

• Information and referral to programs in local communities,
• Help finding respite care so a caregiver can take care of personal business or just take a break,
• High-quality advice and training, to learn how to be an even better caregiver, and
• Support groups to discover they are not alone in the challenges they face–and even find a safe place to share a joke and a shoulder to cry on.

Find more resources for family caregivers.