National Leadership Summit on Military Families National Leadership Summit on Military Families Final Report Prepared for the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Military Community and Family Policy Prepared by Dr. Bradford Booth, ICF International Dr. Mady Wechsler Segal, University of Maryland Dr. Nick Place, University of Maryland Table of Contents I. Introduction .............................................................................................................1 II. Summit Outcomes ..................................................................................................7 III. Summary ................................................................................................................21 IV. List of Appendices .................................................................................................23 National Leadership Summit on Military Families I. Introduction Background I n The National Leadership Summit on Military Families (the Summit) is one of the steps t in an ongoing process to transform military family support and readiness programs r and eventually lead to more effective coordination and implementation. The Summit o was held November 9 - 10, 2009 at the University of Maryland University College Inn & Conference Center in Adelphi, MD. The Summit was a partnership between Military d Community and Family Policy (MC&FP) within the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the University of Maryland. u c This innovative partnership grows out of recognizing the value of using the unique re- sources of these organizations to benefit the quality of life of military personnel and their t families. These organizations include agencies that conduct research on military families, i provide direct services to military personnel and their families, and possess the potential o to provide even more knowledge and services to enhance military family well-being. n Participants Summit participants included senior military family policymakers, family program lead- ers and their staff, military family researchers, and military family members. Additional participants included faculty from the University of Maryland and other land grant universities, and staff from USDA who have ties with military family programming. All of these participants share common interests in strengthening the well-being and resiliency of military families during an era of persistent conflict, and the goal of transforming fam- ily support and readiness programs in ways that enhance their effectiveness, efficiency, and overall impact. All the military service components were represented at the Summit (including the Department of Defense, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, National Guard and Reserve components), as were land-grant universities and other non-gov- ernmental partners. 1 National Leadership Summit on Military Families Summit Objectives The objectives of the Summit were to bring together those most knowledgeable about contemporary military family issues and challenges—and the programs/services in place to support service members and their families—to candidly discuss areas of strength, opportunities for improvement, and methods to enhance collaboration within n and across the Department of Defense (DoD), the military services, USDA, the land- o grant universities, and the Cooperative Extension Service. The Summit also challenged participants to identify barriers to effective support and to create specific action steps i based on group consensus. The action steps developed at the Summit, which are de- t scribed in this document, represent the participants’ collective vision about which areas c in military family support must be considered top priorities and what specifically needs u to be done to ensure (a) military family programs are relevant to the challenges families face today, and (b) programs are appropriately configured and resourced to produce d meaningful, measurable outcomes. o The component organizations have resources that can be used to support military personnel r and their families. For example, there is the potential for utilizing Department of Agriculture cooperative extension agencies at land-grant universities, programs and agents dispersed t throughout the U.S. They already involve thousands of military children in 4-H programs on n military installations. Several land-grant universities have active programs of research on mili- I tary personnel and their families. For example, faculty and graduate students at the University of Maryland’s (UMCP) Sociology department have been conducting such research for more than 40 years, and its Center for Research on Military Organization has an active program of research on military families. The UMCP Family Science department conducts research, provides counseling services to military families, and trains counselors to work with military families at the Center for Healthy Families. University of Maryland Extension conducts edu- cational programs for youth through its Operation Military Kids program along with financial management education for military personnel and families. Purdue University is the home of the Military Family Research Institute (MFRI), where University researchers are currently conducting research on life after deployment and the needs of Reserve and National Guard families. Faculty in the Human Development department at Virginia Tech University lead an ongoing program of research and evaluation focused on the needs of military children and youth and the programs designed to support them, and are at this time developing an evalua- tion of DoD non-medical counseling programs Activities and Process The format of the Summit combined (1) presentations from senior DoD and USDA leaders, military family members and researchers, (2) a series of “breakout” ses- sions that engaged participants in small working groups, and (3) follow-up “gen- eral” sessions held immediately after the breakouts that involved all Summit par- ticipants. Below we provide a brief summary of each of these three components 2 National Leadership Summit on Military Families of the Summit. The detailed results of the breakout sessions and general sessions are described in Section II (Summit Outcomes). Presentations The Summit was opened with a “call to action” by Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (MC&FP), Mr. Tommy Thomas. In his remarks, Mr. Thomas emphasized the attendees’ role as active contributors in helping chart the way forward for military family support, and encouraged them to use the next two days to collectively define the top issues and challenges facing military families and the family support community. He also encouraged participants to craft and prioritize the actions required to address these needs. The Summit keynote address was delivered by the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Plans Mrs. Gail McGinn, then performing the duties of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. She emphasized the progress that has been made in supporting military families since Army Chief of Staff John A. Wickham’s seminal white paper “The Army Family” was published in 1983. Mrs. McGinn acknowledged that the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are placing military families under more strain than at any time in the era of the All-Volunteer Force, and that more needs to be done to ensure that pro- grams and policies are able to meet current challenges. These challenges, which would also surface in the breakout sessions, included ongoing, repeated deployments, a geographical- ly dispersed military population, and changes in the ways military families communicate I and access information. n t These speakers were followed by an introduction and welcome from University of Mary- r land President Dr. Dan Mote, who emphasized the university’s commitment to America’s o service members and veterans, and described the unique role played by the land grant universities in national defense and the opportunities to continue that tradition through d Cooperative Extension Service programs. u Following these tone-setting remarks, participants were provided an overview of re- c search findings on military families from Dr. Shelley MacDermid-Wadsworth, Director of the Military Family Research Institute at Purdue University, and Dr. Beth Ellen Davis, t retired chief of Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics at Madigan Army Medical Center. i Additional research findings from recent and ongoing studies and surveys of military o families were provided by Dr. Angela Huebner of Virginia Tech University’s Department n of Human Development, and Dr. Rachel Mapes, Special Assistant for Policy, Planning and Evaluation in the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Plans). Following the first research overview, a panel of nine military spouses from across the various military service components shared their reflections and experiences on being in a military family during a time of persistent conflict. A Q&A format was employed, in which both a MC&FP moderator and audience members posed questions to the panel. 3 National Leadership Summit on Military Families Though these military spouses described numerous challenges that they had faced and were facing as a consequence of military family life, the panel as a whole exhibited a high degree of resilience and commitment to helping improve the quality of family support. On the Summit’s second day, Mr. Thomas opened the day’s activities by summarizing the information gathered at other key events, including the DoD Joint Family Readiness Con- n ference held in Chicago, IL in September 2009. Following lunch, the role of USDA and the Cooperative Extension Service in supporting military families was highlighted in an ad- o dress by Dr. Rajiv Shah, Undersecretary for Research, Education and Economics, USDA. i t c Breakout sessions u During the afternoon of the first day of the Summit, attendees participated in the first of d three breakout sessions, which constituted the main work of the Summit. The breakout sessions were small group discussions among 10-12 participants with specific questions to o be addressed. Participants were assigned to each breakout session by DoD organizers of the Summit, based on the topic of the session and the interests/professional roles of each r attendee. The topics of the three breakout sessions were: t n  Breakout session one: Unique issues and challenges for military families I  Breakout session two: The goals and scope of family support and readiness  Breakout session three: Identifying action items and next steps Facilitators and recorders, mostly University of Maryland faculty and graduate students, were present in each session to ensure that the questions to be addressed were consistent across groups and a transcript was captured reflecting the discussion and recommenda- tions. (Detailed descriptions of the work and findings from each of the breakout sessions are provided in Appendix E). By design, the focus of the last two breakout sessions built on the results and conclusions developed in the prior sessions. General Sessions After each breakout session (with each group deciding on its major issues, challenges, and/or recommended action steps), participants reconvened in the main auditorium for a general session. The purpose of the general sessions was to “report out” (i.e., present the work accomplished by the individual breakout groups), and collectively determine the major family readiness challenges, appropriate goals and scope of family programs, and the action steps. (For a detailed description of each general session, see Appendix A). 4 National Leadership Summit on Military Families Each breakout group chose a speaker for the general session to describe their group’s top issues and findings. All participants then had an oppor- tunity to vote via electronic clickers on priority issues and action steps, with the resulting selected priorities being displayed in real time on a large screen. Armed with the priorities/issues selected by majority, group members then were tasked to address these specific subjects when developing recommended courses of action in subsequent breakout sessions. The final general session, held on the second day of the Summit, brought to the stage a representative from each breakout group to summarize their group’s recommended action steps. Using the process described above, all Summit participants registered their vote on which of these actions steps should represent the top priorities for DoD family support and readiness programs. These action steps, and the major findings and conclusions of each of the breakout and general sessions, are presented in the next section. I n t r o d u c t i o n 5