New approach to military family support unveiled

WASHINGTON — White House officials have released a report that unveils a new, governmentwide approach to military family support and details a sweeping, interagency effort under way to strengthen families and enhance their well-being and quality of life.

President Barack Obama announced the results of a nearly yearlong review of military family support Jan. 24 in a White House ceremony attended by the Defense Department’s top brass, including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; service chiefs and their spouses.

From child care to health care to spouse employment, the report, titled “Strengthening our Military Families: Meeting America’s Commitment,” identifies the key issues military families face and presents programs and resources government agencies plan to roll out in the coming months to address them.

“This document is the commitment to our military families not only of this government, but this nation in terms of their support, their care and their empowerment,” Robert L. Gordon III, deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Pentagon’s office of military community and family policy, said during a recent interview.

The report outlines four key areas that the governmentwide effort plans to address: enhancing military families’ well-being and psychological health, developing military spouse career and education opportunities, increasing child care availability and quality, and ensuring excellence in military children’s education and development.

“We’re bringing together our agencies, our whole of government, with our whole of nation to focus on those four priority areas,” Gordon said. “The DoD can’t do this alone; it does take a whole-of-nation approach.”

Gordon cited counseling services as an example of the benefits of an interagency effort. While Defense Department officials offer counseling through Military OneSource and within military support centers and communities, “we can expand those services and activities with partnership with other sorts of sectors,” he said.

The report addresses plans for expanded counseling services in detail, which will greatly benefit military families, Gordon noted. Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 2 million service members have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan in an unprecedented frequency, the report said, and, along with service members, military families also are vulnerable to deployment-related stress. The report cited a 2010 study that reports an 11 percent increase in outpatient visits for behavioral health issues among a group of 3- to 8-year-old children of military parents and an increase in behavioral and stress disorders when a parent was deployed.

“We do need to pay attention to the socio-emotional support of our kids,” Gordon said, noting the impact of long parental separations due to deployments. He also acknowledged the additional responsibilities the spouse back home must shoulder in the military member’s absence.

“We have devised ways ahead as a government and ... in partnership with the other sectors to do something about that,” he said.

The report also lays out new and improved programs to increase behavioral health care services for military families in the coming months. Officials with the Veterans Affairs and Defense departments, for example, are slated to implement a multiyear strategy to promote early recognition of mental health conditions that includes education and coaching for family members and integration of mental health services into primary care, the report said.

DoD officials also are working to boost the number of mental health providers and to increase quality of care. In one effort, a TRICARE military health plan working group is undertaking a yearlong project to provide the best possible health care for the more than 9.6 million beneficiaries beyond 2015, the report said.