Help for kids takes many forms - Army Spouse and Family Resources - Army Times

Help for kids takes many forms

Help in dealing with the stress of deployments is starting to emerge for military parents and kids, and researchers are starting to look at long-term effects.

Col. George Patrin, an Army pediatrician who is chief of the California Medical Detachment at the Presidio of Monterey Army Health Clinic, Calif., has developed a DVD, “Mr. Po and Friends Discuss Reintegration After Deployment,” an animated support program aimed at children ages 6 to 11 and their families.

He and pediatrician Maj. Keith Lemmon produced the DVD, “Youth Coping with Military Deployment: Promoting Resilience in Your Family,” featuring teens talking about how they coped with a parent’s deployment.

It has interviews with children, including some who attended Operation Purple camps, run by the National Military Family Association for kids of deployed troops.

Lemmon has also launched research on a group of 100 children from preschool to college age at Fort Stewart, Ga., during and after a deployment, examining how their stress levels may change after deployment. They are hoping this will stimulate more research on the long-term effects of multiple deployments and a preventive screening program for children before their family member deploys, just as service members are screened before they deploy.

Hundreds of copies of the popular DVD were made with a grant from the American Academy of Pediatric Friends of Children Fund and the Army Medical Center and School in San Antonio for initial distribution to military and civilian advocates for children. Families can get the DVDs online from the AAP or the Army.

These DVDs complement the Sesame Workshop’s “Talk, Listen, Connect” video and educational materials for pre-school children, featuring Elmo, which was produced last year. That video was produced with funding and support from Wal-Mart and the Military Child Education Coalition.

Another DVD, produced by Triwest Healthcare Alliance, titled “Help From Home: Deployment Support for Military Service Members and Families,” is also available online.

Military doctors, school counselors, teachers, chaplains, youth program leaders, coaches and church leaders can all have a positive effect on military kids, and the pediatricians hope those who work with military children will use the videos to help children deal with long separations from loved ones.

These extra relationships are important in supporting military children’s welfare, the pediatricians said. “It does take a village to raise a child to be resilient, even without a war going on,” said Patrin. With this war, many of the villagers are deployed, so it’s even more important to reach into the civilian community, Lemmon said.

The pediatricians have been working with the Military Child Education Coalition, a nonprofit group with the mission of helping schools ease transitions and helping military children. The coalition has a community training program called “Living in the New Normal,” aimed at raising the awareness of everyone in the community, from businesses to faith-based groups. Information is on the coalition’s Web site.

“If they’re not connecting with a parent, they may be reaching out to youth leaders, coaches, or others in the community,” said Mary Keller, director of the coalition.

“By training a community, you have a whole lot of people a child can go to,” Keller said. Because the ratio of counselors to children is about 1 to 500 in most schools, counselors may not have the time to interact with a child enough to pick up on problems, she said.

By helping communities become aware that they should at least consider whether the child’s parent is deployed, and educating them about resources, they can guide children to help.

“It’s important not to victimize them. But they can let them know here are some resources, or here’s a person at the church, or on the baseball team” who can help, Keller said.

“Kids, especially teens, don’t want to be singled out. But they want someone they can turn to, and they want to know” that their privacy, concerns and, most importantly, their parents’ service, is “respected,” she said.

Programs exist both on and off installations. A sampling:

• Defense Department schools have beefed up their training and numbers of school counselors, to include placing counselors at summer school locations.

• The Marine Corps Community Services’ “return and reunion” brief helps Marines understand what their children may have experienced in their absence — fear, regressed behavior, new interests. Marines are advised to slowly resume rules and routines, expect changes in behaviors, and let the child be first to renew the bond.

At youth and teen centers, “Deployed Kids’ Group” meetings are held for preteens and teens.

• The Navy, following the Army’s lead, has created new school liaison positions within some Fleet and Family Support Centers.

“Kids Camp” in child care centers helps instill pride, increase knowledge and assure children they are not alone in having a parent deployed.

“Warriors in Transition” and “Families of Warriors in Transition” programs help parents help their children adjust to the return of a sailor parent from a deployment.

• The Air Force has given out more than 13,000 “Stay Connected Deployment Kits” with items for both airmen and their kids. Also, their Returning Home Care Program offers 16 hours of free child care when a deployed airman returns to home station. A new resource, “Deployment and Separation: A Curriculum for Staff and Families” was sent to bases in May.

• The services’ New Parent Support Home Visitation Program provides supportive and caring services to military families with new babies.

• Boys & Girls Clubs of America is affiliated with youth centers of all the services, with standard programs that bases can tailor to their needs. Boys & Girls Clubs also urge their 4,200 clubs in civilian communities to go and find the children whose parents are in the National Guard and Reserve.

Through partnerships with the services, these clubs offer a free year of programs and services to any child who lives far from an installation. Tim Richardson, vice president of military services for the group, said the base youth center personnel do whatever it takes to help the school-age children. Sometimes it’s just a matter of allowing a kid a safe place where he can go into a staff member’s office to talk, perhaps cry, away from other eyes.

They also are partners in the Army’s School-age Program in Your Neighborhood, along with 4-H, which provides school-age child care as a supplement to the on-post programs.

• The National Military Family Association’s Operation Purple camps provide a safe place with fun activities for military children to talk with other kids going through wartime deployments. The group also has other programs and information for military families.

• A number of public schools, many of them members of the Military Child Education Coalition, have tuned in to the needs of military children.

In Cumberland County, N.C., near Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force base, programs are in place to help educators keep an eye on the welfare of military children.

“Because counselors are trained through the Coalition, as soon as we see a change in the student, we meet with parents to verify whether there’s a change in the home life, and get permission to intensify our help to the child,” said Robbin Tatum, counselor coordinator for the schools.

Their “Student 2 Student” program has developed into more than an orientation program to help new students make the emotional and academic adjustment into a new school. “Many times the peer person is the go-to person, and that student may go to a counselor and say, ‘I think Joe needs some extra help.’ We consider ourselves a family,” she said.

Sometimes counselors see a sense of grieving in the students until they know when the parent is coming back, she said. “They’re grieving over and over,” with multiple deployments, she said.

And, in many respects, the support network for these children is still feeling its way along. “For the time being, we’re working through these issues together,” Tatum said, but added: “We may, in the future, say we should have done certain [other] things.”

• Operation Homefront, a national private, nonprofit organization with chapters around the U.S., has programs to help deployed military families with financial needs and other services. A new program provides support services for wives of wounded warriors.

• Groups like FamilyStrong, based in San Antonio, are found in civilian communities around the country. FamilyStrong is a volunteer outfit founded by military families with programs to help military families affected by deployments, families of wounded troops and families with special-needs members.