This study was undertaken to identify ways to improve the delivery of Child Development Services on military installations. Interviews with policymakers and visits to military installations revealed that 1) the goals of Child Development Services Systems are multiple and not clearly defined, and consequently do not always translate into practice; 2) demand for child care needs to be more carefully assessed, and decisions about how much child care to provide and to whom should be made; and 3) heavy reliance on Child Development Centers promotes "fair weather" readiness, providing care as long as children are not ill and their parents are working regular hours. Ill children and irregular working hours create significant care gaps. A more systemic approach to the provision of care that addresses inevitable gaps in care should be undertaken.
The U.S. military has been continuously engaged in foreign conflicts for over two decades. The strains that these deployments, the associated increases in operational tempo, and the general challenges of military life affect not only service members but also the people who depend on them and who support them as they support the nation â€" their families. Family members provide support to service members while they serve or when they have difficulties; family problems can interfere with the ability of service members to deploy or remain in theater; and family members are central influences on whether members continue to serve. In addition, rising family diversity and complexity will likely increase the difficulty of creating military policies, programs and practices that adequately support families in the performance of military duties. Strengthening the Military Family Readiness System for a Changing American Society examines the challenges and opportunities facing military families and what is known about effective strategies for supporting and protecting military children and families, as well as lessons to be learned from these experiences. This report offers recommendations regarding what is needed to strengthen the support system for military families.
The Department of Defense (DoD) supports the largest employer-sponsored system of high-quality child care in the country. Through accredited child development centers (CDCs), family child care (FCC) homes, youth programs, and other before- and after-school programs, the DoD provides care to over 174,000 military children aged 0 through 12 years. To evaluate the system's ability to meet the child care needs of military families, DoD needs information on the magnitude of potential need. For a number of years, the DoD has been using a formula that translates the basic demographic characteristics of the military population into an estimate of the potential need for child care (see the companion monograph Providing Child Care to Military Families: The Role of the Demand Formula in Defining Need and Informing Policy, MG-387-OSD, by Joy S. Moini, Gail L. Zellman, and Susan M. Gates). The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) asked the RAND Corporation to collect data on child care need and child care use, assess the validity of the DoD formula, and recommend improvements to the formula. Data for the assessment came from a 2004 survey of military families about child care issues. This technical report describes and analyzes the data from that survey. It documents survey methods, defines three outcomes of potential interest to DoD (reported child-care usage, unmet child-care need, and unmet child-care preference), presents detailed results of an analysis of these outcomes among military families, and analyzes the relationships between these outcomes and military readiness and retention. For example, the data identified an important relationship between unmet child-care preference and propensity to leave the military: Families that express unmet child-care preference-that is, they are using one form of child care but would prefer another-are also more likely to report that child care issues might drive them to leave the military. This report will be of interest to officials responsible for DoD child-care policy and other quality of life issues. It should also be of interest to child care managers in other federal organizations, child care researchers, and child care policymakers at the national, state, and local levels who grapple with the issue of estimating the need for child care.
The Office of the Secretary of Defense asked the RAND Corporation to assess the Department of Defense (DoD) child-care demand formula as a tool for translating information on military families into measures of potential child-care need and to suggest ways that the tool might be improved. The authors assess the validity of the DoD formula in meeting child-care needs, analyze the factors that influence key child-care outcomes, and address the broader issue of how DoD can refine its goals for military child care.
As a result of the generally low quality of child care in the United States, quality rating and improvement systems (QRISs) are proliferating in the child-care arena. This study examines the QRIS developed by Qualistar Early Learning, a nonprofit organization based in Colorado, evaluating how reliable the system's components are, whether the QRIS process helped providers to improve, and whether and how much children benefit from such improvement.
Children with parents in the military face unfamiliar and complicated emotions. This comprehensive handbook is for civilians and military personnel who work with or care for children who experience separation through deployment, death, or divorce. Written by an internationally known, hands-on trainer and presenter in the field, this book contains theory-based, practice-driven strategies for handling separation and helping young through elementary-age children move forward and live full lives.
"The evidence presented in this paper questions whether the current U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) system of in-kind subsidies for child care is meeting DoD recruitment, readiness, and retention goals or service member needs in an optimal way. DoD appears to be reaping limited benefits from the substantial subsidies provided to families that use Child Development Centers. Many families cannot or choose not to use the subsidized on-base DoD programs; these families receive no support for child care costs. The authors' findings suggest that the DoD child care system could change in a number of ways to better meet DoD and family needs. First, it could redistribute resources within the current system. Rethinking priority policies from the perspective of both child care need and the degree to which care characteristics fit with likely DoD and service member needs would be another important way to change the system. DoD may also wish to expand the child care benefit to cover more military families and a broader set of child care needs. Alternatively, DoD could expand access to child care through the use of cash benefits, vouchers, and/or negotiated discounts with local providers that meet quality standards, while continuing to provide some amount of DoD Family Child Care homes and Child Development Center care. DoD may also want to invest more resources in assessing the value of child care benefits, as it does for other military compensation components." -- provided by publisher.
