Guard Leaders Urge Family Readiness Support

By Army Sgt. Darron Salzer
National Guard Bureau

Aug. 3, 2010 - If National Guard members continue to deploy in support of overseas missions, their family readiness groups will need to be supported at the same pace, Guard leaders told unit volunteers here yesterday. "If we allow these rotations and what we do to become common, accepted and routine, then we need to give the families the focus that we should and that they deserve," Air Force Lt. Gen. Harry M. "Bud" Wyatt III, director of the Air National Guard, told an audience at the 2010 National Guard Volunteer Workshop.

In a panel discussion, Guard leaders also answered questions from the audience about how to ensure that critical family support programs remain in place and provide the support they should.

"I think it's important to take the resources that we have and spend them responsibly," Wyatt said, "so that when people question our family support programs, we can show with pride and dignity that the funds and the people that we have in these programs are the highest priority. These should be the last programs the military looks at to cut back."

Wyatt said the pressures on the economy are obvious, and possible family program cuts are a concern.

"Your immediate response is why anyone would cut back on the most important part of combat readiness, but it's not easy," he said, adding that the services also are cutting back on equipment accounts.

Army Maj. Gen. Raymond W. Carpenter, acting director of the Army National Guard, said family readiness groups have developed a "partnership" with their soldiers.

"For as much as the servicemember took an oath to serve, ... many of you might as well have signed the same oath, because you are just as committed as that soldier," he said.

Carpenter credited the Army Guard's recruiting and retention success to family programs. "The story from the inside of the Army National Guard is that every soldier has either re-enlisted or volunteered to be a part of the Army National Guard since 9/11," he said. "We are nine years into two wars and we have an excess of soldiers, and that's a great story about the Army National Guard and its family programs."

Carpenter said the Army is looking at the programs available to the families of unmarried soldiers. "And I am confident that at the end of the process, the right support will go to the right people.

"For us here in the Army National Guard," he continued, "people are our No. 1 priority, and taking care of people is absolutely part of that process."