Sent in by Veterans News and Information Services
By Linda D. Kozaryn
WASHINGTON -- Sometimes, one person's troubles can trigger a
whole lot of change. That's what happened when family policy
officials here learned of one service member's plight.
The young E-5, his wife and three small children lived in a run-
down trailer 20 miles from base in southern Virginia. He went to
work on base each day, leaving Mom and the kids on their own.
She wanted to work, but she couldn't find a job. Even if she
could have, the family could not afford child care. They owed
creditors more than $60,000.
By the time installation family service officials learned about
the situation, the family's only recourse was to declare
bankruptcy.
Their dilemma and other cases like it sparked DoD to create a
new "holistic" approach that views and treats the needs of
service families as a whole. "Charting a Course for Change," a
strategic plan for 1998 to 2004 recently released by DoD's
Office of Family Policy, outlines the concept. Family policy
officials are briefing the services on plan goals.
"We discovered family service specialists aren't always talking
to each other," said Linda K. Smith, family policy office
director. Families in trouble often need support in several
areas at the same time, she said, so that means "spouse
employment program people need to work with child care people or
financial assistance people to come up with an overall plan to
help stabilize a family."
DoD's new approach coordinates family programs and services and
should improve continuity and cost effectiveness, Smith said.
"We really need to bring down the walls between family programs
and look more comprehensively at people and complex issues," she
said. The plan calls for consolidating current programs into
three categories: family well-being, economic well-being, and
children and youth.
Family well-being links family advocacy, parent support, and
mobility/deployment and crisis assistance programs. DoD expects
this network of related programs to help families develop the
skills and knowledge needed to meet the demands of military
life.
Economic well-being includes relocation, transition, financial
management and spouse employment services. With about 235,000
separations and 750,000 moves in DoD every year, family policy
officials said, the economic stability of military families is
challenged frequently. DoD intends to provide state-of-the-art
tools, information and assistance so families are better able to
manage financial responsibilities.
Child development, youth services and special needs programs
fall under the children and youth category. Family policy
officials said these programs significantly impact military
readiness and retention. The goal is to provide a continuum of
programs that focus on the needs of children and youth of all
ages.
Programs are aimed at helping DoD families during the full
military life cycle -- recruitment, training, deployments and
mobilizations, retention and separation. Policies governing
these programs emphasize taking a holistic approach, providing
commander flexibility and determining measurable results.
Commanders' flexibility in supporting family programs was an
area of concern addressed by policy officials preparing the new
strategy, Smith said. "Commanders were upset because they felt
they were hamstrung by regulations and requirements that they
might not need," she explained.
"We had a commander at one base who had a family advocacy
requirement to have certain people on a committee -- teachers,
chaplains, financial assistance experts," she explained. "He
didn't have all those people, so in order to comply with the
requirement, he was actually flying people in from other bases
to be on the committee. He felt that if he didn't have the right
people, he was out of compliance with the regulation and he was
legally vulnerable."
Smith said DoD wants to provide a structure that allows
commanders to set their own priorities yet requires
accountibility. Faced with doing more with less, commanders want
more independence in managing funds so they can better target
resources to local family needs, she said.
Family programs must be targeted to what people actually need,
Smith stressed. One community, for instance, was off target when
it offered relocation seminars exclusively for senior officers'
wives, she said.
"They've moved many times," she said. "They don't need help as
much as those younger families who have never moved and have
more limited resources. The people who need help are the E-4
spouses who've never been out of Biloxi, Miss., and now find
themselves over in Germany. In this case, we lost sight of the
program goals and why they were established. We need to
determine who needs help the most, find those people, and get
them the help they need."
Moving away from facility-based programs and moving toward more
outreach programs is another thrust of the new approach, Smith
noted. "We want to provide outreach in the true sense -- where
we go out and find people like that family 20 miles away from
base who are in trouble, as opposed to putting a sign on a door
saying, 'Come here, if you need help.' We're looking at ways to
get out information other than coming into an office somewhere."
The family policy office is making use of today's technology,
putting information on the World Wide Web. Officials have
developed a Military Assistance Program home page and Web sites
on DoD's child development system, a relocation program called
Military Teens on the Move, and an outplacement referral
service. CD-ROM training programs are available for educators on
the Family Advocacy Program and for junior service members and
families on personal financial management.
Along with consolidating programs and giving commanders more
flexibility, the family policy plan also establishes ways of
measuring whether or not a program works, Smith said.
"Human resource programs and family issues are not easy to
quantify," she said. "How do you know you're successful? We are
developing a performance plan requiring certain 'outcomes' so
we'll be able to determine if we've made a difference."
Overall, the new approach features a fundamental change to how
the department looks at providing family services. In the past,
the military philosophy was to take care of its own. Programs
were designed to take care of service members' needs through a
variety of resources, but they did not encourage service members
to help themselves. The new approach aims to promote self-
reliance and independence by helping service and family members
learn to take care of themselves.
FACTS
American Forces Press Service
Based on 1997 figures, the Military Family Resource Center
reports the following facts about military families:
o Nearly 60 percent of service members are married. Nearly 50
percent have children and 7 percent are single parents.
o On average, military families move every three years.
o About 50 percent of military families live off base.
o The average military family has two children.
o The more than 670,000 service members have 1.3 million
children, 66 percent below age 14.
o Junior enlisted make up 44.5 percent of the military. About 77
percent of the children in junior enlisted families are younger
than 6.
o Nearly 80 percent of military members are younger than 35.
o The majority of military spouses are below age 35, including
about 40 percent between the ages of 26 and 34; and 19 percent
between the ages of 22 and 25.
o About 65 percent of military spouses have jobs.
o In 1997, about 6 percent of service members were married to
other service members. They have nearly 36,000 children.
