DOD plans to boost access to military childcare Published April 11, 2006 By Gerry Gilmore American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON (AFPN) -- The availability of child-care services for military families will receive a boost from a multi-faceted approach by the Defense Department, a senior official said recently. "We project the (child-care) needs as greater than what we're offering at this point," said Jan Witte, director of DOD's office of children and youth. The ongoing realignment of U.S. forces from longstanding overseas bases to stateside installations and high operational tempos are placing demands on the military child-care system, Ms. Witte said. Consequently, DOD wants to "jump-start" its military child-care programs to provide more spaces for the children of active-duty and Reserve-component service members. "Currently, we're using a multi-pronged approach" to increase military child-care capacity, Ms. Witte said, noting DOD will continue to build on-post facilities. "And we're also doing some contracting with civilian centers off the installations" to address lengthy waiting lists at some military bases, she said. DOD has also provided funds to get modular buildings that will help meet immediate child-care needs. Ms. Witte estimated that more than 4,000 new child-care spaces will be created through new construction and the use of modular buildings. "They're just starting with those, and we're really hopeful that this will really be a way to get some spaces quickly," she said. DOD now spends about $434 million on military child-care each year, Ms. Witte said. More than $60 million in supplemental funding has been used in the past three years to extend the hours of child-care services, including weekend and evening care, and to run summer camps for military children with one or both parents deployed overseas. Using emergency supplemental funds from Congress, Defense Department officials have given the services $92 million to help buy modular or prefabricated facilities, and to renovate and expand current facilities. Modular, prefabricated child development facilities are on track to open this month. Most of the new or added facilities will be ready within the next year. The Air Force will add 1,598 spaces for children whose parents would otherwise have to seek off-base day care. The first Air Force modular child development center under the initiative will open in April at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. With spaces for 300 children, it will clear the current waiting list, said Arthur Myers, director of Air Force Services. In addition to modular centers, the Air Force will add some spaces by building permanent additions to existing structures, Mr. Myers said. After those spaces are added, however, the Air Force still will have about 4,500 fewer spaces than it needs, he said. But this new effort will help. “Eglin’s installation commander told me this is the biggest morale booster for the families he has seen,” Mr. Myers said. “This is going to have a dramatic impact on Air Force families.” Turnaround time for obtaining and opening these modular centers is less than nine months, he said. Standing up a center under the traditional military construction process, from planning to funding to construction to opening, can take five years. The modular construction allows an entire center to be built off-site quickly and inexpensively, according to the military’s specifications, and then trucked to its new on base home. “When you’re actually in a facility, you don’t realize you’re in a prefabricated structure because of the way they’ve been patterned and designed to fit together,” said Ms. Witte. Installations are responsible for digging foundations and preparing sites for the units. Defense Department money pays for the units, while the services pay for furnishings. If a permanent facility is later built at a base, or if the need for childcare decreases, the modular facilities can be uprooted and moved to another location. Efforts are ongoing to address an estimated shortage of about 27,000 military child-care spaces remaining after the 4,000 new spaces are factored in. The focus, Ms. Witte said, is to increase child-care services at installations experiencing high deployment rates or affected by long child-care waiting lists, and at bases gaining troops through overseas redeployments. "Child-care across the nation is at a premium," Ms. Witte said. "Finding those spaces at the right places is a challenge" for both military and civilian families."