http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/265439607

How to support families during overseas deployments a sourcebook for providers

The purpose of this report is to review what is known about family support that can be applied to future Army deployments. The review is restricted to units of at least 150 service members that have deployed for at least a six month period since 1980. The Army's current installation-level support system for the Active Component (AC) has been fairly stable since 1990. The support system for AC battalions is highly dependent upon volunteers and thus varies by the numbers, talents, and interests of those who participate in it. Reserve Component (RC) families are fairly similar to AC families in the problems they experience and they use friends and relatives to handle most difficulties they encounter. They are more likely to use local Army assets (e.g., CHAMPUS, Family Support Groups, and local Army units) than to use military installation-based services (probably because of the distances involved in visiting such services). All RC literature we located suggested that family dispersion made the delivery of family services difficult. The report also contains suggestions on how to improve the operation of family support systems, particularly those at the battalion level and below.

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