several of these issues in the past this is a first step committee hearing over a decade that was focused on family support programs that are so important and vital to our military families during these challenging times the burden of eight years of conflict has not only fallen on our service members a large portion of that burden has also fallen on their families as well and unfortunately their plight is often overshadow by the majority of americans have been outstanding in their support of our men and women in uniform sadly the majority of military families in a recent survey resealed about ninety four percent of military families felt that the average american does not understand the sacrifices these families are making they told us especially seeing a big on those most vulnerable our military children the number of military children who are seeking mental health care since the start of operation iraqi freedom has more than doubled and many children are being forced to wait months to receive treatment because access to care is not sufficient however mental health is just one area where there are challenges as we have found there are issues that affect service members going through the deployment process during pre during and post appointment and while their issues are slightly different military families face their own set of hurdles during each day as well and it is our responsibility to ensure that we work to address these issues and support our families as we do our men and women in uniform i do not mean to imply at all that nothing has been done for families quite the contrary the service is an apartment have undertaken significant effort extraordinary in many cases to impro programs and assistance for military family there but there is more that can and must be done to support all of those who defend our nation and that includes our military families today we have asked a senior enlisted representatives from each of the services to be with us as the eyes and ears of their individual for they know and understand what is happening on the ground level we have also asked a representative from reserve affairs to be here to provide the perspective of the unique challenges reserve and guard families face as well as a representative from the department who is responsible for all of these programs so let me introduce our witnesses deputy undersecretary of defense military community and family policy office of the secretary of defense personnel and readiness colonel cory lyman assistant director individual and family readiness  national guard and reserve members and their families are geographically dispersed throughout america's communities they have an opportunity the department is committed to support reserve members and their families  policies that maintain strong family programs and through an update of efforts such as the yellow ribbon reintegration program great responsibilities have been placed on the shoulders of guard and reserve members and their families on behalf of the department of defense i expressed deep appreciation for the support given by this committee to the care and the support of dedicated patriotic reserve component members and their marvelous families who also serve and sacrifice reserve component families addressed family needs reserve component family programs address family needs and meaningful ways active component and they can get the message that they are important to the military and that we want them to participate and feel welcomed back from family members the center of excellence for yellow ribbon reintegration in addition to reports of how many attended these events they receive feedback reports they become the clearinghouse  and so forth so really comes down to how quickly timely payment is adequate there are plenty of doctors in this country and i'm sure there's many more doctors like myself who for that i think as you know one of the problems our parents of autistic kids has is that have is that autism gets caught up in this whole issue of mental health parity which is autism doesn't get treated as a physical illness it gets treated as something that a about once a quarter hold a town meeting for special needs parents and families because my experience is that parents for a variety of reasons that transit in and out of military bases and transit you know the military but also because of hip and privacy concerns that there may be you know ten families on a base with kids with severe asthma but they won't know each other because the caretakers can't tell the other they have the right does happen to fifteen twenty thirty minutes before i realized that they had never met each other they didn't learn a damn thing for me but they learned a whole lot from each other about what services were available and i mean it was just like a tremendous weight off of the actually to ta parents well i think that would be the goal i think that would be accomplished with some kind of ongoing regular that everybody in the military at any base have or their families have a some kind of a town hall meeting for parents of special needs kids and then after the meeting there could be the table for different different kids have different needs but that could be helpful because it really is a challenge for our military it's a big determinant of where people the military want to go to be stationed is what buildings situations where rock air force base for the school building on base owned and operated by the by the i mean operated by the local school district who has responsibility for replacing it that everybody agrees is in it is inadequate and it's been an issue sitting out there for some time but the base commanders have been very aggressive appropriately about making the case the local school district that building should be replaced and the most recent disappointment is that it was one reason i voted for the stimulus bill because there were dollars there to go for school districts around the country help build schools going they're not going to use any federal stimulus dollars for the school building on this federal facility and so my my my question is  maybe this is not if you deal with do we have other issues with school public schools on military bases are they maintain well are they treated appropriately local school districts is that something mine i mean i feel for the school that has a school district like most they do not have an overabundance of money on the other hand i think the point you are making today is we have a special responsibility for military families and i talk to one parents that it's a real downer when you're overseas you get an e mail from a kid