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Advocates to provide deployment support

Nine Air Force bases will soon hire civilian advocates whose single focus will be putting airmen’s spouses, parents or children in touch with support programs they need while their loved ones are deployed.

As part of a pilot program, the Caring for People Coordinators will be placed by September at the Air Force’s most heavily deployed bases: Langley, Va.; Kadena, Japan; Nellis, Nev.; MacDill, Fla.; Barksdale, La.; McConnell, Kan.; Tinker, Okla.; Lakenheath, England; and Eglin, Fla. The coordinators at Lakenheath and Eglin will also serve Mildenhall and Hurlburt Field, respectively.

If the program works, the Air Force eventually could expand it to all active-duty, National Guard and Reserve bases, said Eliza Nesmith, chief of Airman and Family Services at the Pentagon.

“We needed some additional help at the installations to be able to concentrate on what families need while they’re back home, what children need and ... what the [single] airmen need on behalf of their parents who are back home,” she said. “It’s a clearinghouse for people who are going through deployment and the folks they leave back home.”

The application period for those who want to become coordinators at the nine pilot bases closed June 10, and Nesmith said she will receive a list of candidates by the end of June or early July. She and a selection panel will then hire the coordinators, train them and have them in place by September.

She said interest has been high from applicants for the positions and the major commands that are participating in the program.

“It seems like we’ve had a great groundswell of people who are interested in doing this kind of work,” she said. “I have started hearing [requests] from commands [to] expand the pilot. ... I think that’s all very positive.”

The coordinators will be assigned to airman and family services flights within force support squadrons, but they will provide an information source about resources that exist outside the flight as well. That includes chaplains, mental health resources, community organizations and anything else that might help airmen and their families while they are deployed.

“We don’t necessarily need more programs ... we just need to know about the things existing,” Nesmith said. What “we want them to do initially is to pull together existing programs and resources ... and let the communities know.”

The coordinators will conduct regular needs assessments at their bases, she said, and they will be able to help create new programs if they find a need that is going unfilled.

Nesmith said she is not looking for coordinators with any particular skill set, but rather is seeking a certain type of personality.

“We’re looking for a go-getter, someone who is a self-starter, who can go out and knock on doors if that’s what it takes, is not hesitant to go into offices and make connections with people they don’t know,” she said. “Someone who can really get out there in front.”

A key to making the program successful, she said, will be getting word out to families about the new coordinators. Nesmith and her team are working on a marketing plan for the pilot bases that includes outreach to the Airman and Family Readiness Centers, handouts and flyers, magnets, pins, and other materials.

Capt. Mike Andrews, a public affairs officer at the Pentagon who is helping with the marketing plan, said it is also important to get key base leaders involved.

“At the wing level, first sergeants, commanders [and] key spouses — those are three critical ways that you can leverage folks that communicate with a lot of different people,” he said. “Once you have those [leaders] informed, they can have eyes on and communicate with the families to make sure they know, hey, here’s a coordinator who can help ... support you.”

The program grew out of a Caring for People summit held March 30 to April 2 in Washington. More than 200 personnel — including family support, mental health, child and youth programs, sexual assault prevention, chaplains and lawyers — gathered to come up with ways the Air Force can improve how it cares for airmen and their families.

One of the main topics was deployment support, and the coordinator program was one of 11 initiatives that came out of the working group. Nesmith and her staff will work on the other initiatives during the next year. Those include using social networking technology more effectively for family support functions, destigmatizing mental health issues, improving the Air Force’s special needs programs and giving single airmen a bigger voice in shaping support programs.