Last November, DoD hosted a National Leadership Summit on Military Families in conjunction with the US Department of Agriculture and the University of Maryland. Over 150 leaders from organizations that provide support to military families along with some family members brainstormed ways to improve family support programs. The report from that event is now out and available for your reading pleasure. At the very least, the executive summary is an interesting read, though it won’t be a surprise to any of you.
Some highlights for you, attendees determined:
The Top 5 issues for military families:
- Challenges of the deployment cycle
- Psychological health of military families
- Access to services and consistency of support
- Communications challenges
- Frequent relocations
Top 5 goals:
- Evaluate programs and build on successes
- Communicate critical information to all family members
- Establish collaborative partnerships
- Address psychological/behavioral health needs of military families
- Develop and implement programs supporting military children and youth
Hopefully we’ll get some viable programs for military families out of this conference and report and what I anticipate will come out of the Congressional Military Family Caucus Spouse Summit.
Onto some new benefits/programs that hit the radar this week:
This Saturday, the VA will begin accepting applications for the Fry Scholarship program for eligible children of servicemembers who have died in the line of duty since September 11, 2001. Under this program, each eligible child is entitled to 36 months of benefits at the 100% rate where normally, all eligible dependents would have to split a maximum of 36 months of GI Bill benefits.
Earlier this week, DoD announced their 2010 Military Spouse Intern Program. There are 120 opportunities available under this pilot program help spouses secure employment with federal agencies. Details are still forthcoming (a permanent website is set to launch in the next few weeks), though there is a fair amount of information available right now on their website. The program is open to:
All spouses of active duty service members except:
- Spouse who is legally separated from service member when the person begins the internship
- Spouse who is also a member of the Armed Forces on active duty
- Spouse who is a retired member of the Armed Forces
If you end up taking advantage of this program and manage to secure one of these positions, please let me know. Would love to hear the feedback on how it’s working. Thanks.