Research PaperUnderstanding military families who have dependents with special health care and/or educational needs
Section snippets
Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP)
The 2010 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) mandated the creation of a program to support military families who have children or adult dependents with special health care and/or educational needs. Key provisions of the act included: (a) assigning military personnel to locations where specialty care is available; (b) timely and accurate evaluations; (c) providing an adequate number of case managers; (d) improved individual services plan; and (e) support for referrals and services.
The
Current study
The aim of this study was to understand FS provider perspectives on the kinds of challenges military families face in meeting the special health care and/or educational needs of their dependents, other challenges military families faced, and the adequacy of community services and supports. We anticipated that FS provider would report encountering families who contend with a range of stressors in numerous life domains.10 It is important to note, that we do not know with certainty the proportion
Participants
Each FS providers (N = 323) was emailed and invitation by the Department of Defense, Office of Community Support for Military Families with Special Needs (OSN), and Military Community and Family Policy to participate in web-based survey. Emails bounced back for 45 potential participants. Thus, email invitations were successfully sent to 278 FS providers. Of these, 160 FS providers responded to the survey with 146 completing the survey in its entirety. This represented a total response rate of
Types of disabilities encountered
Respondents were asked to indicate whether they worked with families who were dealing with any one of 13 specific special health care and/or educational needs. In addition, respondents were asked to mention any other special health care and/or educational needs they encountered (see Table 5). Of the 13 specific disabilities cited, the largest proportion of professionals reported working with dependents with Autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). More than 80% of FS
Discussion
Results of this study indicate that those families enrolled in the EFMP have significant health care and/or educational needs. Autism, developmental delays, emotional and behavioral problems were commonly mentioned by FS providers. In many cases, families have dependents with multiple special health care and/or educational challenges. Given the unique demands and challenges faced by all military families, it is likely that families enrolled in EFMP are at particular risk for exposure to chronic
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This work was funded by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture, award # 2010-48709-21867.
The authors have no conflicts of interest.
There have been no prior presentations or publications of this work.