JBER provides programs to families in need

by Airman 1st Class Tammie Ramsouer
JBER Public Affairs

7/16/2014 - JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska -- A mother and child hold the most precious person in the world to them: her husband and the child's father, before he leaves on a six-month deployment to Afghanistan.

Moments like these happen every day on military bases. Fortunately, there are programs designed for deploying military members and their families for support and help while their loved ones are in another country.

The key spouses program is one of the prominent programs on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska. More than 100 key spouses are actively involved with commanders and first sergeants and ensure information about deployed members and support groups is available.

More programs can be found through the JBER Military and Family Readiness Center and the Army Community Service Welcome Center on JBER, one of which is the Hearts Apart Program.

"In the Hearts Apart Program, we do events for family members of the sponsors, and all the spouses have to do to sign up for the event is to show their spouse's orders," said Tech. Sgt. Bradley Kecker, JBER Military and Family Readiness Center noncommissioned officer-in-charge. "The trip that we will be going on July 20, will be to the Alaska Zoo, but the events change quarterly. It's an event for them to get out of the house and just do something fun."

"The hearts apart program provided much-needed social interaction during my husband's deployments," said Merideth Rothstein, wife of Air Force Master Sgt. Howard Rothstein, 3rd Maintenance Group product improvement manager. "This program was a life line for me and my family."

When parents need to have a reprieve from their children, the Give Parents a Break program allows them to have a four-hour break free of charge.

"This program is paid for by the Air Force Aid Society, and parents call to schedule their child for the specific time they want to drop them off at any of the Child Development Centers," Kecker said.

Through the program, 16 hours of free childcare is provided every month to spouses.

"The Family Readiness Center had many activities to prepare our kids, help them during [the deployment] and assist in welcoming their Dad back from his deployments," Rothstein said.

The JBER Military and Family Readiness Center offers Operation Read With Me, where parents have the opportunity to record themselves on a free 30-minute video while reading their children's favorite book before their deployment.

"We have many other offers for the families, like putting a photo of their deployed loved one on a pillow case or T-shirt through Operation Sweet Dreams," Kecker said.

The car care program is a service for families while their spouse is deployed to receive a one-time oil change and safety check voucher good for 30 days at the Army and Air Force Exchange Service service station on JBER, Kecker said.

The Family Readiness Program briefs this information to all military members and their families before a deployment to ensure they are aware of the procedures. The program supports the family before, during and after deployment with opportunities such as financial readiness classes, disaster preparedness and crisis intervention, family care planning and master resiliency training.

"We have resiliency training on the Army side and we teach our key spouses about how to be a key caller, and how to keep in touch with other families during that deployment time," said Lisa Williams, Army Community Service Welcome Center family readiness program manager.

Key callers are family members that make morale calls to other family members of deployed spouses to make sure they are doing well and if that family member needs help or a day to get out of the house, the key caller will try to arrange help to that spouse.

"We do keep in touch with them on a regular basis because we deploy quite a few military members at a time, so it can be overwhelming for families," Williams said.

The JBER Military and Family Readiness Center and Army Community Service Welcome Center are not the only services that provide help to families on base through these programs but the Aurora Housing office also offers programs to residents in base housing.

"We mow and trim yards weekly during the summer and provide snow removal during the winter," said Amy Sneed, Aurora Housing deployed spouse's program manager. "We also offer a one non-traditional work order per month where residents are eligible to call in for an hour of service for items that may need to be assembled, such as hanging shelves, or rearranging furniture."

Before individuals can receive these monthly incentives, they must bring a copy of their sponsor's orders to Aurora Housing or in building 338, and fill out a Deployed Spouses Program enrollment form.

All of these programs are offered to all military branches and their families on JBER.

For more information about the programs offered to military members and their families on JBER contact the JBER Military and Family Readiness center at 552-4943 or the Army Community Service Welcome Center at 384-1517. For more information about the services the Aurora Housing office offers, call them at 552-4439 or 384-3907.