Marines planning overhaul of family services programs

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Marines planning overhaul of family services programs



By Travis J. Tritten, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Tuesday, February 12, 2008 IWAKUNI MARINE CORPS AIR STATION, Japan — The Marine Corps said last week it hopes a retooling and major funding hike over the next two years will patch its struggling family services programs.
Recent surveys show many Marines and their families have lost faith that the Corps can support their needs, military and civilian officials with the Marine Corps Family Team Building program said during a visit here Thursday.
The Family Team Building programs were designed to help families connect with their communities and better transition during difficult periods such as changes of station, deployments and even deaths. But family services have suffered in recent years from a lack of funding, insufficient personnel, inconsistency and generation gaps, the Marine Corps found after an analysis and a survey of 9,000 servicemembers and their families.
After two years of work, the Corps said it has a new approach and an increase from $5 million to $40 million in annual funding for the Marine family programs around the world.
The changes will mean full-time family readiness program directors at each Marine Corps base, a new standardized structure and an electronic data and communications system to serve families.
“These are the results of information we gathered in the field,” said Sgt. Maj. Kevin Wilson, commander of the Marine Corps Family Team Building program. “We know it is not the 100 percent solution and it will require some tweaking.”
Under the new plan, the family readiness program directors, who oversee family services and volunteer work on bases, must now be full-time instead of part-time employees, Wilson said.
The Marine Corps has decided it will hire up to 84 civilian program directors, he said, and the most likely candidates will be former servicemembers who live near bases.
“We want a family readiness officer who will be there for years,” Wilson said.
The service now has 60 full-time program directors, which equals just one director for every 115 family readiness volunteers, far below the industry standard of one director for every 50 volunteers, he said. In August, the Corps decided to bolster the planned changes with a hike to $40 million in annual funding, which will put the family services on par with funding for other programs such as Semper Fit, a physical fitness advocacy program, Wilson said.
Past funding provided a total of $5 million annually for 17 Marine Corps installations, Wilson said.
Meanwhile, a new electronic network will keep track of changes such as marriage among servicemembers, making it easier to identify and serve families, he said.
Volunteers will also see changes in family readiness services, said Kim Gates, section head of Marine Corps Family Team Building.
Expense reimbursements will be processed more quickly and the new electronic database will be able to tap a wider pool of volunteers, Gates said.
“We are expecting to see the full transition of this (new program) in two years,” Gates said.



Stars and Stripes: Marines planning overhaul of family services programs