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We're opening Fort Rochester.
We're doing pilots. We want to learn.
We opened another one in Brevard, North Carolina.
And people say, "Why Brevard, North Carolina? It's in the middle of nowhere."
And we said, "Exactly. It's in the middle of nowhere."
We just opened another one in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, near PIttsburgh.
And what we're finding is the need is there. Not surprising.
The center in Rochester, open a little over a year now--a year and a half now--
has already served over 5,000 families and soldiers
with over 17,000 different types of needs.
What's interesting, of the soldiers coming in and asking for help in these centers,
about 15 percent are active duty.
Of the families coming in, 30 percent active duty families
because what we're finding--and you already know this--
is when the soldier deploys, a lot of times the spouse takes the kids
and goes back to home.
They're away from the installation. They're out there with us, where we live now.
But they need services.
They try to get help, try to take the kids to the doctor,
and what does the system say? "You're not in TRICARE."
"What do you mean, I'm not in TRICARE? Sure, I'm in TRICARE."
"No, you're not in TRICARE."
So they come see our Army Strong Center in Rochester,
and Marianne, the lady that works there for us,
says, "Where's your husband stationed?"
"He's stationed at Fort Campbell."
"You're in TRICARE South."
"Rochester is in TRICARE North. That's what the problem is."
"And you'll never get help until you change the enrollment."
"Oh. Nobody ever told me that. I didn't realize that."
We've already had 600 family requests coming in in Brevard, North Carolina.
Kind of strange, out there in the middle of nowhere.
One of the first ladies I met when Laura and I went down for the opening
came up and said, "Thank you, thank you, thank you." I said, "Why?"
She said, "My husband is in 5/2 Stryker. They deployed to Afghanistan."
Some of you know this.
"They took a pretty good beating. I couldn't stay there. I had to come home."
"So I brought the kids back here to Brevard."
"The Army didn't pay for me to bring my kids and family back here to Brevard."
"The good news is my husband is coming home."
"The bad news is I don't know how to get back."
And the lady in our Strong Center said, "Leave it up to us."
Within a matter of hours, calling around to the different community organizations,
she had the plane tickets for them to go home to Fort Lewis.
Serving our families out there.
So we're going to continue to run these pilots because it's working
but, more importantly, because the need is out there,
and it's not a need for the Reserve; it's a need for the Army, for all of us.
We're going to open our next one up in Oregon.
We've got a congressman in Oregon that's already come to us and said,
"Hey, I need something like this in Oregon because we don't have any installations."
We've got a congressman in West Virginia that's already called the VA
and talked to General Shinseki and said, "I want one of these
"at a VA hospital in Beckley, West Virginia."
General Shinseki calls me and says, "What's going on?"
I said, "Sir." [laughter]
There's support out there for this.
And what it needs to be and what we want to be
is we want to be an extension of ACS.
That's what it really is.
It's not about the Army Reserve; it's about taking all those services
you want on your installation and let's put them out there
in the communities where we have soldiers dispersed
and families dispersed around this nation.
There's a need, and we're going to work together--Rick and I--
on how do we make this part of the Army plan?
Not an Army Reserve plan; it's part of the Army plan.
The other one, I'll tell you, is both in Rochester and both at Coraopolis just recently,
who else showed up at our grand openings?
Gold Star Families.
Gold Star Families who said, "This is what I need."
I told Rick a couple of months ago there was a gentleman in Rochester who said,
"My son was killed in action, and he was at Fort Hood, Texas."
And he said, "I've never been to Fort Hood. I don't know anybody at Fort Hood."
"My home is in Rochester. This is what I need here at Rochester."
We've got to be an extension of the SOS program, an extension of ACS.
Pipe it out there to the communities, and let us be part of that success for you.
Second thing I'll tell you real quick that we're doing that's a success
is our Employer Partner program.
We partnered with employers starting about two years ago.
Dan Nichols, sitting down here on the front row, from Inova Health Care
was our first partner.
And what we said is, "We have this wealth of talent in the Reserve component
"that's called soldiers--men and women wearing uniforms
"who are trained, they have a different set of values,
"a different set of ethics, integrity, a work ethos,
"and oh, by the way, they have a lot of skills."
"What do you need? You need a good workforce in America."
And so Inova Health Care stepped up and said, "Let us partner with you."
Today we are taking soldiers, we are taking spouses,
and Inova is hiring them to work in their hospitals.
And I'm keeping them in the Reserve in uniform in my hospitals.
And so we're partnering together to share this talent--talent for America.
We partner now with over 1,200 employers across America
to produce law enforcement officers for America,
truck drivers for America, medical professionals for America,
mechanics for America--you name it.
And the industry and the employers now are embracing this wholeheartedly
and saying, "This is a--" It's a patriotic thing to do, yeah.
But it's a business strategy.
This is a heck of a workforce we've got--men and women in uniform
that understand mission comes first.
They have that warrior ethos.
We had a unit that just recently came back from Afghanistan.
The commander said, "I had 19 soldiers unemployed when we came home."
"Today I have one unemployed soldier."
Using the program, contacting employers in their area,
he said, "We got all 18 out of 19 jobs, and the 19th guy can't decide what he wants to do yet."
[laughter] "He may want to go back to school."
So I'm telling you, employers across America are embracing the military,
and I think you'll hear from Dan later in one of the panels,
and maybe he can tell you more about how beneficial this has been for Inova.
But my message to you is we're all one family.
There is no difference.
We're all sacrificing, we're all making a commitment,
and we need our families if we're going to retain our soldiers.
So I look forward to your questions. God bless you.
[applause]
[Martinson] Thank you, sir.
And now to complete our panelist presentations,
Major General Raymond Carpenter.
[Carpenter] Good afternoon, everyone. >>[audience] Good afternoon.
[Carpenter] It's my honor and privilege to be here.
I'm the Acting Director of the Army National Guard.
To tail up on General Lynch's reference to a sitcom,
I've been at this now for, it'll be 17 months here on the 29th of October,
and I feel like I'm starring in a sitcom that could be canceled at any day. [laughter]
I want to talk to you a little bit about where we've come in the Army National Guard.
Next slide, please.
This kind of tells the story, and it's been repeated in a couple different versions
up here already.
If you look at the starbursts on the upper left-hand corner and the upper right-hand corner,
that tells the story of where we've been since 9/11.
And if you look at the starbursts on the opposite ends,
that tells you the success we've had with what we're doing.
And with regard to the family programs, I'd tell you that before 9/11,
it's almost like we were in the Stone Age with regard to the family programs.
Family programs were auxiliaries, family programs were nice to have,
not required.
But since 9/11, we've found out inside of the Army National Guard
that they are critical to our organization.
'We've found that the families might as well have signed the Oath of Enlistment
with their family member because they are just as surely inside the Army
and the Army National Guard as their member.
We've come to the understanding of that relationship.
I was just talking to the family program manager from Tennessee,
and we were talking about the 278 which just came back from their second trip downrange.
And I asked her, "Is it better this time?" And she said, "Yes."
But she admitted we still have a way to go.
And that really is the status for us.
We've learned a lot, but we've got a lot left to accomplish.
Next slide.
Resiliency is something that we see in our families.
Thank you across the board for your service.
Thank you for your sacrifice.
Thank you for your resiliency.
After nine years of war, resiliency is a key part of our organization. It's key to what we do.
General Stultz talked a little bit about what the Army Reserve is doing
in terms of establishing programs, centers, around the United States.
Across the National Guard we have 378 Family Assistance Centers.
They are at many of the 3,000 locations that we have got across the Army National Guard
in this great nation.
If you meet a soldier, if you see an Army family in hometown America,
that family and that soldier are more than likely a member of the Reserve component,
either the Army National Guard or the Army Reserve.
Could I just see a show of hands of the Army National Guard
and the Reserve component families we have here today?
That's fantastic.
[applause]
The obvious difference, as General Stultz talked a little bit about,
with the Reserve component is in a couple of areas.
One is we're geographically dispersed.
We're not on an installation.
And by the way, that's not all bad
because there are communities that wrap their arms around many of the units that deploy,
whether they happen to be Guard or Reserve.
People ask me about whether this nation is at war.
Does this nation as a whole acknowledge that we are at war?
I can tell you that when you mobilize a unit in Wheatland, Wyoming,
the people in Wheatland, Wyoming, know that this nation is at war.
And just as surely as the installation at Fort Hood,
you'll find the Wheatland, Wyomings will wrap their arms around those families,
around those soldiers, and they are incredibly proud of the services
that are provided by those servicemembers as well as the unit.
Now, the other half of the story, as General Jones noted,
is there is an obligation for us to provide support to families in a dispersed environment,
a geographically dispersed environment.
And the challenge for us is to figure out how to do that,
to meet the expectations,
to provide service to the families that's equal to the service of the servicemember
and the service of the families.
And to the extent that we're successful in doing that,
we will continue with those numbers that you saw of 105 percent retention
and 362,000 end strength against a required strength of 358,000.
With regard to the Family Assistance Centers,
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff challenged the adjutant generals as a group
a year and a half ago to take on the task of supporting family programs,
regardless of component, regardless of service.
And the adjutant generals have taken that on.
If you Google inside of New Jersey, for instance,
and you look for what's going on in the military side of the New Jersey National Guard,
and you're looking for a Family Assistance Center,
you'll find the unit locations and you'll find the assistance centers there,
and you'll be able to go to that assistance center,
and you'll be able to go get assistance face-to-face.
We are not, in the National Guard, in competition with the Army Reserve
in this particular area or the Army.
As General Stultz pointed out and as General Lynch pointed out,
we are one Army.
We are closer across the three components of the Army
than we have ever been in my 40-some years of service.
That's pretty darn important.
And it's more than that; it's precious, and we ought not to part company here.
We ought to partner with each other, and we ought to build on each other's capabilities
[applause]
and we ought to get to where we can truly say, "Army Strong" across all the components,
regardless of Guard, Reserve, or Active.
Comprehensive Soldier Fitness.
We talked a little bit about Master Resilience Training going on in Pennsylvania.
We are about to establish one of those centers to train our soldiers and family members
on Master Resilience Training in the Professional Education Center
for the National Guard in Little Rock.
We hope to have that established sometime in the next six months.
The requirement for Master Resilience Trainers,
regardless of whether you're in uniform or not,
has grown incredibly.
Inside the National Guard, we've got a serious suicide problem.
We have doubled the suicide rate that we had last year.
Now, part of that has to do with reporting
but also has to do with our responsibility to build resilience inside of our formations
and inside the people part of our organization.
Most of our suicides--over 60 percent--have never been deployed.
So it's not necessarily a mobilization problem.
We think when somebody has financial problems,
when they have emotional problems,
when they have relationship problems,
maybe it's a problem that they have never been required to cope with
those kinds of issues before.
There's not enough resiliency there for them to do what my generation used to do,
and when something bad happened to you, the answer was, "Suck it up. Move on."
That's not necessarily the approach that our young people use now.
And for me, it's kind of a foreign thought,
but to have something happen to you where you think that an option,
a reasonable alternative, is taking your own life is just beyond my comprehension.
But that is what we're seeing across not just the formations in the Army
but across our society.
I think when we look back at 2010, when we get the CDC statistics,
we'll find an increased rate of suicide across this whole country, across our society.
What a great thought that just like bringing people into the Army
and building them physically, making them stronger,
that we could bring people into the Army and we could make them more resilient,
make them more capable of coping with life.
What a thought.
And it's a great thought, and it's something that's inside of our Army,
inside of our Army as a learning organization.
And I'd tell you that we are going to step up to that.
We are going to take the Master Resilience Training program
on full bore, along with some other programs we've got out there.
The Kansas National Guard has a great program on resiliency
and coping with life's failures, life's challenges.
And so this is a great opportunity for us to take care of our people.
Next slide.
And finally, I'd tell you that there are 54 states and territories and district out there,
and each one of those states, territories, and district has a governor,
each one has an adjutant general, each one has a program that is reaching out
to the soldiers inside of their state or territory and district,
regardless of what uniform you wear or what component you are.
And the effort here is to provide state level programs to you
as a customer and take care of you.
And again, what I'd ask you to do is regardless of where you live,
whether it's in Tennessee or whether it's in my home state of South Dakota
or whether it's Texas--wherever--go out and Google the National Guard,
and you'll find these kind of programs that are out there.
New Hampshire and Ohio have signed MOUs with local care providers,
and so soldiers and families can get care, behavioral health care,
for little or no cost.
Inside of California we've got embedded behavioral health specialists
who drill with our guardsmen,
and so when the guardsmen come back and when they're having problems,
they've got two things.
One, they've got the availability of the care by the care provider there.
And number two, it lessens the stigma associated with going to see somebody
about behavioral health problems.
And that's really the trick.
It goes to the discussion that General Lynch had about Fort Hood with the alcohol example.
To the extent that we can dispel the stigma associated with people deciding to seek help
for behavioral health problems, we're going to be better off,
and we're going to be a healthier force.
Peer to Peer/Buddy to Buddy.
About six months ago, we had an engineer company
from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan return after a year in Afghanistan.
That little engineer company of a little less than a hundred soldiers
had over 200 IED strikes as they did road clearance operations
inside of Afghanistan.
And they're now home, and they are in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan,
and they need help.
And the help that's being provided by Michigan is the Peer to Peer/Buddy to Buddy program.
That program is that on a regular basis, both the squad leaders
and the people that deployed with that unit connect with each other.
Behavioral health specialists are reaching out to these soldiers,
checking to see their status, checking to see how the families are doing,
making sure that they are working through the reintegration process.
In Minnesota they have Beyond the Yellow Ribbon,
which is a program that was initiated after the 1st of the 34th returned from Iraq.
You might say, "What's special about the 1st of the 34th?"
Well, the 1st of the 34th mobilized in 2005
and spent six months at the mobilization station away from home.
They went to Iraq for 12 months,
and after they had been there for 11 months,
they got notified that they were being extended for 3 months.
And so they spent 15 months in theater.
And when they got home, the demobilization process was a couple weeks on top of that.
That unit spent 23 months away from home,
and the impact to the families in the 1st of the 34th that were in Minnesota,
that were in Iowa, that were in Nebraska, was incredible.
And that caused the communities, the states, the adjutant generals
to reach out, and that was where the Yellow Ribbon program started,
which is something that we're using across all the components now.
And it's a great program, and it's a program to support families,
it's a program to support soldiers.
So again, I appreciate your service, I appreciate your sacrifice
but more than that, I appreciate your honesty.
I've never seen any organization, any audience that we get in front of,
that will be more frank and more blunt. [laughter]
And I was told that, "If you think this audience is frank here today,
"you should have been here last year."
But the real story here is if you don't tell us the story,
if you don't tell us what's wrong, we can't fix it.
So please. I look forward to your questions.
[applause]
[Martinson] Thank you, gentlemen.
We will take a couple of questions.
Please remember when you ask your question to identify yourself
and the community where you are from.
I'd like to go to the other room this time and let them start with the first question,
if we could, please.
[female speaker] Good afternoon. Can you hear us? >>[Martinson] Yes.
[female speaker] First I have a comment, and then I have-- Oh. I apologize.
My name is Holly Paulsboe, and I am from Fort Bliss, Texas.
My first comment is I'd like to say thank you for giving us the opportunity to come here
and to hear us out.
That really says a lot that you guys really do care about what's going on
in our communities.
The second is actually an idea proposal for you.
There's a large number of spouses that are currently seeking mental health
due to deployments and the stress of the economy, etc,
as well as child abuse and neglect.
A lot of families are also being chaptered out
because they do not have backup family care plans
because it's either their spouse or they're trying to escape their family
or their family is in economic stress.
I currently run a program for military families that is an emergency shelter for children.
It allows them to stay for 24 hours to 90 days.
Now, this has helped many, many families within our community
and allowed them, if their spouses have gone into the hospital
while their husbands are deployed, their kids can come and stay with us.
Those children that have been abused or neglected come and stay
while their spouses get the help that they need.
I really think that this would be a great, great program for many installations.
That way they're not losing their children to the system,
and they're not having to be chaptered out because they can't get the care that they need
because they don't have 24-hour child care.
[laughter]
[Paulsboe] Who answers it, right?
There's always going to be a pregnant pause as we look and see,
"Who's going to answer that one?" >>[Paulsboe] No, that's okay.
No. I've got that. First off, thank you for what you do.
Thank you for what you're doing at Fort Bliss, providing shelter for the family members.
You've just got to know that every Army leader acknowledges today
that the stress on our soldiers and the stress on our families is,
as I said before, almost unbearable.
We acknowledge the fact that we've got to do a better job with behavioral health counselors,
Military and Family Life Consultants, financial assistance coordinators,
those things, to reach out to not just our soldiers but their family members as well.
And you've got to know that my biggest frustration
commanding all the installations now is we're not sharing best practices very well.
What you're doing there at Fort Bliss, we did something similar at Fort Hood,
and we just have to make sure we share best practices so we can all get better together.
[Paulsboe] Okay. Thank you.
I just want to note too that a lot of us, they expect us to rely on one another,
but there's a lot of families that are stressed out themselves.
So even though we have good friends within our community,
we don't want to overburden them as well. Thank you.
[Martinson] Thank you so much for your comment.
We have a question right up in the front here.
Hi, my name is Sharon Thacker, and I'm the FRG leader for the 805th MP Company.
My question is for Major General Jones.
If a Reserve component soldier is activated or placed on Title 10 orders
or whatever the whole mumbo jumbo is for that for them to be active duty
and they have an exceptional family member and they enroll the children in that program,
once they return and they're no longer on active duty,
is that child released from that program?
Or are they still eligible even though they're no longer active duty
to receive help?
[Jones] I think you know the answer to that question,
but let me try.
The answer is, if the soldier isn't on active status,
the soldier doesn't have that entitlement.
So the answer to that is, frankly, no.
Is that something we're looking at? Yes.
Is that something our families told us during our focus groups? Yes.
Do we have them in our plan to attack every single concern? Yes.
So that's a do out for us, and we acknowledge that.
[Thacker response - inaudible]
[Thacker] They deployed back in 2001.
I was not there during that time.
The soldier got hurt while over there,
and so he was brought back to the Army hospital or wherever
before he could come home.
He has three children. All three are exceptional children.
So once he came back injured, they couldn't get any assistance
because, of course, the Wounded Warrior and all that stuff wasn't in place back in 2002-2003
for them, so she had not only three exceptional children and now a wounded spouse,
and he has since left the unit as of last year because he developed cancer.
So in addition to her having to deal with those three exceptional children
and a spouse who was injured and now has cancer, I mean,
it weighed heavily on them, and he finally said, "I've got to give it up."
We've got to do something for these people.
You are bringing up something that we work very hard to do,
and that is to work the each's of the program.
That is a starfish to us.
We will work tirelessly to provide some relief.
And one of the good things that goes to what we talked about earlier,
we have a very generous public.
The public is very supportive of our soldiers.
When we hear things like this--remember, I said comprehensive, coordinated support--
we will shake down every tree, we will do whatever we can to link that family
so they can get the care and support they need.
So you have my promise--
[Thacker] But it goes back to how we get the information out to everybody,
because even as an FRG leader, I follow up under a great command,
and they do typically give us most of all the information that we need,
but it is some stuff that I hear about from other people
that we didn't know about.
And if I hear it, I'll bring it to their attention,
but we've got to get all the information out to family members,
not just rely on the soldier to tell the family member.
We have to do it. Y'all are looking at us as FRG leaders to educate these families.
But we don't have all of the necessary tools and resources to do so.
[applause]
I totally agree with you.
There's a growing capability to provide information.
Again, that was one of the shortcomings that our families told us.
"Our soldier isn't bringing the information."
"How can you get it to us?"
And one of the efforts that we have undertaken
is when that soldier and that family visits ACS,
we're saying, "Would you like to sign up for our push system of information?"
And they're signing up now, and we're getting information.
[phone rings]
[Martinson] Thank you so much.
We're going to take a question from the other room now.
[female speaker] This comment is for Major General Jones.
My name is Tanisha Wilkes, and I'm from Fort Bragg,
an FRG leader. [cheering and applause]
I am one of those parents with a special needs child.
My son is 13 with cerebral palsy, and he is in a wheelchair and is nonverbal.
My concern is through CYS there are no activities for them.
I am not able to take him because he needs one-on-one care,
so he's not able to participate in a lot of the sports and activities.
I am able to take him to a FCC provider with a whole bunch of babies,
and they are not wheelchair accessible.
I feel like we need to address this problem because these kids are being left out,
whether we go and set them up with a buddy system
to help them with some of the sports activities
or provide one-on-one aides for these children.
Also, respite care is great.
I receive 40 hours of respite care but, unfortunately, it's not enough.
I am at Fort Bragg, which is my home, and I have a great support system with my family.
But others are not as fortunate, and we need to address these problems
because for some of these mothers it's just too much,
especially with their husband gone, a special needs child
and other children, and I think we need to look at this a little bit closer. Thank you.
[applause]
[Martinson] Thank you. We'll take one more question
in the back corner of the room back here.
[female speaker] I want to second that for the lady next door.
My son is also special needs, and there are no programs.
And what you were talking about earlier today,
how soon are those programs going to be implemented
so we don't have to go back when we move from post to post
that we have to start all over again?
And then when we do go from post to post, one post will have one program
and it's all great, but then we go to another post and there's nothing there for our children,
and they get left out.
I appreciate that comment because that's exactly what our focus groups told us.
We are looking at standardizing programs
because the thing that gets under my skin the most
is when I hear a family that says, "I was at Fort A,
"I go to Fort B, and I don't get consistent support."
So through the efforts of the strategic plan,
we are attacking one bite at a time.
Sometimes it seems like an elephant.
But I promise you that we are biting one bite at a time,
and we will get this problem and these situations under control.
I promise you that.
[applause]
[Martinson] Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in thanking
our distinguished panel of speakers.
[applause]
[Martinson] I know there were many questions that you didn't get to ask,
but please remember if you would like to ask those questions
to send them to familyprograms@ausa.org
We have one more presentation. Please don't leave.
We have one more presentation this afternoon.
Our final presentation will be the Military to Medicine.
Please welcome Mr. Daniel Nichols and Ms. Patty DeiTos.
[applause]
Thank you for your attention.
I know it's getting late in the day, and we'll move ourselves along quickly.
But this is an important issue that was brought up a little bit earlier,
that idea of underemployment.
Underemployment is a significant issue that is impairing
the economic success of our military families.
And it is our goal to do something about that.
Every MOS deserves a job.
Every Military Occupational Specialty deserves to have a civilian equivalency
that they can transition into, and that is not the case right now.
We're working hard in health care at least to start that approach.
The partnership with the Army Reserve and General Stultz that he has spoken to,
without them, we wouldn't be where we are today with more than 500 hires,
more than 1,200 students just over the last 18 months.
I have six military spouses starting next Monday into new jobs and new careers.
[applause]