Spouse Blog

At a recent conference held by NIH, DoD, and the VA, it was apparent that people are beginning to understand that the [mental] health of the family and the service member are interrelated. You can’t care for the individual without caring about and taking care of families and caregivers.  To a military spouse, this seems so intuitive that I had to remind myself that I was in an auditorium full of practioners who need to hear statements like that.  After all, how effective can they be in their jobs if they don’t understand the framework within which they work to effectively support military families?

BG Sutton, the Director of the Defense Centers of Excellence did a great job of charting the course for the day that would follow, charging the audience with the task of working together to identify knowledge gaps and work together to close them.  Mrs. Patti Shinseki followed sharing vignettes of her life with General Shinseki to set the stage for the doctors and scientists in understanding military families. Gen Shinseki was wounded early on his career and headed out of the Army when he received word that as pilot program, the Army was allowing Wounded Warriors to stay in.  She shared powerfully compelling memories of their lives together and impressed upon everyone present that families are critical/crucial factor of the force and addressed some of the issues we all face, “Myth that subsequent separations/deployments get easier is just a myth…it doesn’t get easier.”  Mrs. Shinseki closed with a discussion of the Military Child Education Coalition’s Living in the New Normal initiative: Helping Children Thrive through Good and Challenging Times.

The day started strong and never faltered.  We were treated to a day of incredible presentations by leaders in their field.  It was borderline information overload, but after 9 hours of back to back presentations and breakout sessions, I came away with some significant takeaways.

• There is a shift in deployment from occasional to continuous events.  It’s widely recognized that it is now a matter of “when” you deploy as opposed to “if”.
• Many studies out there studying the corrosive impact of stress due to multiple deployments during wartime.
• No studies of impact on infants and toddlers, only anecdotal information.
• Very little info on impact of children due to injury of parent during wartime.
• Military families are not homogenous, Dr. Cozza encourages differentiating groups further depending on experience.
• Dr. Cozza is from the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress
• Very little info on impact of children due to injury of parent during wartime.
• For children of wounded warriors, self concept of “idealized parent image” is challenged.
• Trauma response is a process, not an event. It has to be constantly monitored
• Learned more information about a Millenium Cohort Study centered around long term health in light of exposure to military concerns and deployments.
• Millenium Cohort Study on spouses and stress launching 2010. Anticipate report out to DoD by 2012.
• The VA is shifting it’s mission: Focusing on Families and Caregivers of Veterans with Trauma.
• VA’s purchased 200,000 copies of Talk, Listen and Connect for distribution to VA centers nationwide.
• Marriage and family counseling has been added to services for family members of all veterans eligible for VA care.
• Information on VA’s changing population – more than 212,000 females have been deployed during OIF/OEF.
• Half of the troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan come from Guard/Reserve community
• VA’s also doing work on stigma as a barrier to getting mental health care.
• Dr.Chandra briefed the RAND/NMFA study- effects of deployment on military children
  • Military children are faring at or above US average on academic engagement, peer relationships
  • Military children are functioning below average in areas of family relationships, anxiety and emotional difficulties.
  • Girls report more anxiety symptoms. Anxiety problems decrease among older children.
  • Re: effects of deployments…girls worry about next deployment, dealing w/parents’ mood swings & worry about how parents are getting along.
  • As months of deployment increase, so do the challenges. Total # months matter more than # of deployments
  • Re: children, deployments and resilience – mental health of non- deployed parent matters
• Information shared regarding reserve component perspectives and transition from weekend warriors to operational force and challenges associated with that
  • 1.1 million troops in reserve components. Average age is 38
  • 50% are married. Most live in communities far away from military installations.
  • Reserve component is juggling 2 careers…how do you meet the demands of 2 employers?
  • Employers are being stressed by deployments as well.
  • Instantaneous communication is a double edged sword when you’re out in the field worried about family at home.
  • Challenge – how do you provide effective services to a geographically dispersed force?
• Air Force pediatrician, Dr. (Maj) Flake spoke about recognizing and responding to child stress.
  • Deployments aren’t going away. How do we make them stepping stones instead of stumbling blocks?
  • 71% of AD servicemembers with children plan on staying in until retirement
  • Resource for teens – Military Youth Coping with Separation: When Family Members Deploy.

There is so much more to share, but perhaps this is a good place to stop.  We’ve been told that the presentations from the conference will be shared on the DCOE website, so keep checking back.  All in all, it was a day well spent learning more about all the initiatives going on out there to support military families.

On October 24th, MOAA will be hosting a Military Spouse Symposium in Coronado, California in conjunction with our Annual Meeting. The topic is: “Leading on the Homefront: the Evolving Role of Spouses in Today’s Military”.  Here is the description of the panel:

Today’s heightened ops tempo and the stressors associated with back to back deployments make it difficult for some to reconcile the needs of their families with the needs of the military.  When the All Volunteer Force was first conceived in the 1970’s, the makeup of the military was quite different than what we see today.  Resources and support programs designed to support service members and their families were engineered centered around life on a military installation.  Today, the demands of the military lifestyle are no less challenging, yet the military demographic shows that more than half of service members are married, males make up between 6 to 10 percent of the miltiary spouse community (depending on service), more than 69 percent of military spouses are either working or seeking work and roughly 70 percent of military families live off of the installation.  With this panel, we want to evaluate the military’s ability to keep up with this cultural shift.  Additionally, given this new set of challenges – how do organizations like MOAA reach out to support military families in the All-Volunteer Force?

We have invited six military spouses from different branches of service as well as the Army Reserve to share their experiences and insights on the programs available to support military spouses and families.  Their background ranges from the spouse of an NCO to spouses of Flag officers.  We’ll have the male spouse perspective represented as well as insights from spouses delivering family support for geographically dispersed populations.  The panel is fairly representative of our military spouse population.  My question is this: if you had an opportunity to share your insights, what would you say about your own experiences?  Where are the gaps in services?  If you had to pick one program to hold up as a gold standard for something that works well (it doesn’t have to be a military program or resource), what would it be?  How do you feel that your role as a spouse has changed in this era of persistent conflict and heightened op tempo?  And finally, if you could ask the panelists a question about spouses and today’s military, what would it be?   

At our recent Defense Forum Washington, we hosted 3 excellent keynote speakers and 3 incredible panels on Wounded Warrior issues.  For a quick recap of the day’s activities, check out the following videos:

Weeding through the wealth of information that was shared that day, the one essential takeaway that sticks in my mind is www.nationalresourcedirectory.gov, a one stop shop for resources and programs supporting wounded warriors, their families and caregivers.  So tell us, do you have any additional resources you think people should be aware of?

Everyone’s been waiting with bated breath for the launch of the Post 9-11 GI Bill.  Before the transferability rules were released, I know people who delayed their retirement from the military to make sure their bases were covered.  Until August 1st, rumours and all kinds of bad information were swirling around.  Everyone was confused about who was eligible, what could be transferred, how to do it, etc….  The VA stood up a fantastic website.  Go there for all you ever wanted to know about the program and more.  It’s a great website, but we were hearing from a lot of people who were slogging through all the information looking for a clear, concise guide to the nuts and bolts of the program.  So,  we have been working frantically to finish this amazing little eBook on the Post 9-11 GI Bill.  It’s finally done and you can see it for yourself at www.moaa.org/gibill. 

I may be biased, but I think this is the most easy to read information I’ve seen on the Post 9-11 GI Bill.  Download the eBook for your own use, share it with friends, post it on your blogs, whatever you need to do to get the information out there.  If you have more information once you go through the eBook, join us for a webinar on August 25 at Noon EST led by MOAA’s Deputy Director for Financial Education, Phil Dyer.  If you think you’re interested, register now because spaces are limited.  I hope you’ll let us know what you think.  Share your questions or comments with us so we can address them.  Thanks.

A lot of people looking at that acronym for the first time probably now have visions of poultry gone bad running through their minds.  The acronym actually stands for the Joint Armed Forces Officers Wives Luncheon.  A little bit about the JAFOWL from the event program:

In June of 1977, the Navy Officers’ Wives’ Club contacted Art Buchwald’s office to ask if he would speak at one of its luncheons.  Answering the telephone himself, Mr. Buchwald declined, saying thtat he received too many requests from military wives’ clubs.  When asked, “What is all five of the clubs sponsored a joint luncheon?”, he said he would accept the invitation.  The presidents of the other military officers’ wives’ clubs in the area were contacted and all agreed it was a great idea!  Thus, the Joint Armed Forces Officers’ Wives’ Luncehon became an annual affair.

I know that there are other joint events around the country (I’ve attended one in the Hampton Roads area and my girlfriend, Tanya was a speaker for the one in the San Antonio area), but the one I attended today was the originating one in Washington DC.  It was held at The Club at Bolling AFB and we were privileged to have the honorable Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense join us for the afternoon.  He was a great speaker and obviously very committed to military families.  He shared 15 minutes of prepared remarks with us and then sent away the press and spoke very candidly off camera for the next half hour.  What a brave man to stand in front of over 120 military spouses and take questions off the cuff!  While he didn’t make any promises on being able to answer all of our questions, he did do an admirable job of addressing everything from quality of life issues for military children to wounded warriors.  We tackled everything from the troop build up in Afghanistan to the upcoming release of the transferibility rules for the Post 9-11 GI bill.  Here are some highlights for you:

Please keep in mind that these are snippets as I remember (and interpret them) and shouldn’t be quoted as the Secretary’s remarks. 

• People wondered what it would be like when American troops pulled away from the major city centers in Iraq – would the country once again spiral into anarchy and violence or would the Iraqi security forces be able to step up to the plate.  Secretary Gates was confident that the security forces would rise to the occassion and that while it may not happen seamlessly or to the level that we have come to expect with American forces, perhaps it’s more important for them to take ownership of the situation instead of having to do everything perfectly. 
• Secretary Gates spoke about a recent Pentagon report that noted the stressors on military children due to multiple deployments and the currents op tempo.  One of the spouses in the audience remarked that she had 3 children who fall into the category of children under distress.  She had just recently moved from Virginia Beach where the schools had fantastic support for military children up to Northern Virginia where she felt that the support for military children within the public school system was lacking.  The Navy in the Virginia Beach area had just started hiring military liaisons to work within the schools to breed more familiarity with the issues facing military children.  She wondered why military communities around the country weren’t doing the same thing.  The secretary noted this.  I don’t know that I necessarily agree with her blanket assessment of Northern Virginia schools.  My experience has always been quite positive.  I’ve always found the guidance counselors and teachers to be extremely helpful and understanding, but that might also be the luck of the draw.
• There was alot of interest about the upcoming release of the post 9-11 GI bill transferibility rules.  The room was a mix of spouses of Active Duty and retired spouses, so there was a lot of confusion about who would be eligible, when the eligibility would be established, etc…  I keep pointing everyone to the VA webpage that has the most up to date information.  (Incidentally, we’ll release information/interpretation when the regulations come out, so stay tuned.)

There was lots more, but the gist of it was that there’s a lot of great things happening for military families. 

Today’s event was the 31st JAFOWL and the third time I’ve attended one.  Last year, Lee Woodruff spoke.  The year before that it was General Pace.  It’s always a great time, a wonderful opportunity to meet spouses from the other services, so if you’re ever in an area where they have one, I would highly recommend you attend and see for yourself.  As an aside, some of these ladies have been going to the events for years (two years ago, I met friends who had been attending together for the past 19 years, first as active duty spouses then later as spouses of retired service members) – and they view this as a real occasion, so the fashion show is something that is not to be missed – very reminiscent of what I imagine the spouse clubs were like in the 50’s and 60’s.  I’m geeky enough to really enjoy that stroll down memory lane.

I just finished up doing an interview for Military Advanced Education Magazine.  As I was going through all the programs and resources for miltiary spouses and dependents, I realized I was holding out on my blog pals.  So, here you go, the rundown on some resources you may or may not already know about:

• First of all, MyCAA for spouses.  The program offering a $6000 lifetime amount for military spouses pursuing education toward a degree that will help them identify and pursue portable careers has been expanded.  For more information and to get started, go to www.militaryonesource.om.  You’ll have to register and determine eligibility first, but then you should have no problem getting to a counselor to start down the path of achieving your educational goals.
• We’re all hearing a lot about the post 9-11 GI Bill….and for good reason.  With tranferability, it has tremendous implications for military dependents.  The transferibility regulations won’t be released until August 1st, but applications are now being accepted.  Remember that the GI bill will provide a certain of amount of money, but depending on the school you choose, it’s not guaranteed to cover all the costs of college, you should still look into starting or continuing other college savings – don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
• Now, how about the Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges (SOC)….do you know about that?  It is a consortium of more than 1800 colleges and universities that provide educational opportunities for servicemembers and their families.  Pursuing an degree through participating schools makes it easier for folks to transfer credits as they move from installation to installation.  For more information on the program, consult your installation education center.  

Now, if you’re just starting to look at going back to school, or if your kids are in high school and the SATs or ACTs are looming in front of them, consider the eKnowledge and NFL program that makes free SAT/ACT test prep programs available to all military service members, veterans and dependents.  The software is free, you pay only for shipping and handling.  Since it’s inception, the program has given out over $20,000,000 worth of products to military families.

In addition to the educational programs available to support military families, there’s also a lot going on at the policy level.  Just a couple things of note:

• this month, the in-state tuition and continuity rates for military dependents will be mandated in all states, and
• as mentioned earlier, next month, the regulations regarding transferability of the post 9-11 GI bill be released.  (August is the anticipated release date.) You’ll be able to find those details at the VA website. 

You may or may not be aware of this, but one of your greatest advocates (in addition to MOAA, of course) is the DoD State Liaison Office whose regional coordinators tirelessly work key military family quality of life issues at the state level.  They were instrumental in pushing through in-state tuition on a state by state case and have now taken on the Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children.  This Compact seeks to “provide a vehicle for states to follow common guidelines in handling issues that impact children of military families as they transition between schools”.  They want to standardize things such as: records transfer, immunization requirements, graduation requirements, exit testing, etc….  There are currently 21 states participating.  If you want to see if your state is one of those participating, go to their website.

It’s hard to believe that we have another symposium behind us.  What a great time it was!  We had a great turnout and people were furiously jotting down notes during Phil’s Military and Financial Benefits presentation.  Just goes to show that regardless of where people may be in their lives and careers, there’s always something new to learn out there!

After Phil’s presentation, Doc Finch took the stage and wowed us all with his insights into the traits and quirks that make our service member spouses so unique.  From there, it was lunch and the Heroes at Home presentation to winner, Michelle Galvez.  The day was already flying by.  While everyone was at lunch, I squeezed in some interviews with Navy News Media on the importance of providing such forums for military spouses to share experiences, network and learn from one another. 

We barely had time to thank the sailors for their coverage and support of the event before everyone began filing back from lunch.   We were ready for them though.  Our afternoon panel was entitled, “Culture Clash: Military Spouses and the Media”.  We had assembled a talented group of spouses to address the perception of military spouses and who is shaping it.  Joining me on stage were: Sarah Smiley, Tanya Biank and Laura Dempsey.  It was a spirited discussion about the challenges faced by these trailblazers, the perceptions they fought against and what they learned about the disconnect between military spouses and the rest of society.  I thought surely there was no way to top the panel…..until we headed out to the networking reception.  How fun it was meeting everyone and introducing people to one another.  I’m always amazed at the connections that occur at these events.  Once again, the symposium did not dissapoint and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that we were already scheming for next year’s event on the drive back to Northen Virginia! 

We’ll have the pictures up soon, but for now, check out the coverage of the event. 

With the attention the VA has garnered because of the backlog of claims and its reputation of being a bureaucratic black hole, the department certainly has its work cut out for it – and not just within the PR realm. When you think of the challenges that lay ahead in terms of: seamless transitions, greater cooperation between the VA and the DoD and the newer challenge of administering the post 9-11 GI Bill, you have to wonder who President Obama could pick that would be qualified to take on this mixed bag of issues. Who could he entrust with caring for the nation’s veterans? Who would understand the importance of caring for those who paid a premium with service and the need to live up to the VA’s promise, “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan.”

Today, MOAA was privileged to host the man chosen to head the Veteran’s Administration – former Army Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki (USA, Ret.).  As General Shinseki lay out the realities, challenges and goals for the Department, it became quickly apparent to the people packed in the room that in this Secretary, veterans have found a champion. He speaks of the need to advocate on behalf of our veterans and offers very real solutions for breaking through the bureaucratic system currently in place. As a career soldier, he understands the challenges faced by veterans……they’ve faced down the Taliban and taken on Fallujah, but are stymied by the bureaucracy of the VA system.  He knows that the system is broken, but isn’t deterred.  Listening to him speak, you get the impression that it is his passion for taking care of veterans and their families that fuels him. 

When asked how soon we could see changes at the VA, he responded that while he has no hard and fast timeline, he understands that speed is of the essense. While he doesn’t know what fast is in this situation, he prescribes to Mario Andretti’s notion that, “If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” 

Hope you guys can join us!

The folks at Sesame Street are at it again.  The same folks who brought you the Talk, Listen, Connect initiative and last year’s When Parents are Deployed special with Cuba Gooding, Jr., have a new project on the horizon.  Entitled Coming Home: Military Families Cope with Change, this latest production takes on the issue of families welcoming home injured service members.

From the press release:

” Featuring Queen Latifah, John Mayer and Elmo, this half-hour HD program tells stories of service members who return home with injuries, visible and invisible, and explores the heroic struggles their families face in discovering a new way of finding a ‘new normal’.  The special, which premieres in conjunction with April as the Month of the Military Child, salutes the extraordinary courage and strength of these military families and offers the general public a powerful glimpse into what they often must endure.”

The special will premiere on PBS April 1st at 8pm ET/PT (check your local listings).