# 99034. DoD Takes Holistic Approach to Family Services

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By Linda D. Kozaryn
American Forces Press Service

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 

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. 

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