BATON ROUGE – As the 2017 hurricane season begins, the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services is encouraging residents to pre-register for Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, also called Disaster Food Stamps. 

DSNAP provides food assistance for eligible households who do not receive regular Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and who need help buying groceries due to lost income of damages following a disaster.

Any family that has previously pre-registered for DSNAP or has received DSNAP since August 2012 is already in the system and should not pre-register again. Families already registered can update their financial and household information by logging into their account.

Residents who receive SNAP benefits should not pre-register.

To register, residents can visit dcfs.la.gov/preregister or go to GetAGamePlan.org and provide the following information:

- Names, social security numbers and dates of birth for each household member.
- Current address and parish of household
- Monthly income for each household member
- All liquid resources for each household member (cash on hand, checking, savings account balances, certificates of deposit and money market balances)

Pre-registering for DSNAP does not guarantee benefits. In the event of a disaster, the state must request that the federal government initiate DSNAP, but can make the request only if the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has declared the parish eligible for Individual Assistance.

For more information visit DCFS.la.gov/DSNAP.