Fort Drum family members work on a sensory art project inside on March 1, 2024, during the monthly sensory workshop. Hosted by the Fort Drum Exceptional Family Member Program, the monthly workshop helps community members better understand sensory processing and how it can affect behaviors. (Mike Strasser/U.S. Army)

More than half of troops surveyed by the Pentagon who have a family member with special needs are disappointed with a military program intended to provide support and find assignment locations that can provide the needed care.

Only 43% of respondents reported their needs were largely met by the Exceptional Family Member Program in the year prior, while 17% said their needs were not met at all. The remaining troops said the program filled their needs to a moderate or small extent, according to survey results released Monday by the Defense Department Office of Special Needs.

The Defense Department conducted the survey between November 2022 and March 2023 by sending a link through email to troops enrolled in the program, which is mandatory for service members who have a family member with special needs requiring specialized medical care, treatment programs or educational services. It is meant to ensure those service members receive duty assignments to locations where those special needs can be met.

Roughly 100,000 service members received the survey and were asked to what extent the needs of their family were met. Just about 13% of troops answered the questions, with most enrolled to support a child with a medical need.

Congress mandated the survey in the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, an annual bill that defines defense priorities and spending, as the House and Senate Armed Services committees were hearing from families that they were struggling to get duty assignments that had the promised medical and educational supports at those bases. In response, Congress called for reforms to the program, which included creating a standard program across the service branches.

Prior to the Pentagon enforcing the reform last year, each service branch was responsible for implementing its own version of the Exceptional Family Member Program, which meant Marines, sailors, soldiers, airmen and guardians received similar services but at different levels. The survey was sent prior to standardizing the program.

Marines and sailors tended to report through the survey more positive experiences while soldiers tended to report more negative ones. Officers also tended to report more negative experiences that caused them to consider leaving the military.

“The fact that 31% of the officers ranked between O-4 and O-10 with a family member enrolled stated their experiences will have a negative impact on their decision to remain in service should be a wake-up call to all,” said Austin Carrigg, CEO of Exceptional Families of the Military, an advocacy organization. “Our most experienced officers, those who have fought this nation’s wars, are negatively impacted. If they choose to leave who remains behind to guide the next generation should a conflict arise?”

Carrigg, an Army spouse with a child enrolled in the program, said it’s no surprise that this survey showed families are struggling.

The Pentagon intends to use the survey results as a baseline of how to improve the experience of those families, said Tomeshia Barnes, associate director of the DOD’s Office of Special Needs.

Barnes said she believes the standardizing of the program that began in June 2023 will level out some of the discrepancies between service members. Another survey of these families will occur, but a timeline has not been determined.

Moving to a new duty assignment proved to be a significant issue among survey respondents, particularly with coordinating medical care. They reported finding little help from the family support offices on either end of the move. Looking at the overall extent to which the program provided help during a move, 51% of troops said they received none.

“We really want to make sure that we see that level of improvement, and that we put provisions in place to really make sure families feel supported,” Barnes said.

Family support offices are located on every military base and they are required to reach out to newly assigned families in the program. However, 39% of families said they were unaware of the services available through these offices, which focus on getting families to federal and state resources available to them. That can include legal help to access special education in public schools and respite hours for caregivers.

The military is required to have one family support specialist for every 250 service members in the program and is meeting that ratio, Barnes said.

However, for the troops who did report using legal services, respite care and medical care, they had high levels of satisfaction.

When it came to primary medical care, 64% of troops reported satisfaction and 74% were happy with their specialty medical care, according to the survey results.

Only 6% of respondents said they had used respite care and had a 74% satisfaction rate. Another 65% said they were unaware of the resource. The Army had a higher rate of unawareness, with 74% of soldiers reporting that they didn’t know about respite care.

Even less troops — just 3% — said they had requested legal assistance for special education, according to the survey. Of them, 55% were happy with the assistance they received.

Thayer.rose@stripes.com X: @Rose_Lori