JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska -- Service members, families, school-age children and teachers face unique challenges dealing with the military lifestyle. Because service members often answer their nation’s call to serve their country or move to a new location, children often have to adjust to new home and school situations.
The Child and Youth Behavioral Military and Family Life Counselors are available to provide non-medical support to faculty, staff, parents and children for short-term problem resolution such as new schools, deployments, parent-child communication, bullying, and others issues that may arise. They serve 26 schools in the Anchorage and Matanuska-Susitna Borough school districts.
“During my eight years at Ursa Major [Elmentary School], every classroom had between one and five children from families with a parent deployed in support of [Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom],” said Ben Hardwick, Ursa Major Elementary School principal. “I remember walking up and down the hallway with one or two students on each arm crying because they didn’t know how to deal with emotional distress — without the MFLC we would not make it.”
Hardwick admitted at that time, he and his staff were unprepared to deal with the children coping with the trauma of their parents’ deployments.
“[It] was a steep [learning] curve for me and my team,” Hardwick said. “I have staff now who are prepared, so the kids are much more responsive, and the need for the MFLC to ease those issues are a huge help to the children and their families.”
Hardwick remembered when the CYB-MFLC initially started; he said no one wanted to utilize them. Now families are regularly asking to speak to the MFLC.
Schools are selected to receive CYB-MFLCs based on the number of military-connected students attending each school.
“As school liaisons, we are [CYB-MFLC] support here; we are their point of contact,” said Adele Daniels, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson school liaison officer. “We are responsible for placing them in schools where we feel there is the most need, looking at the numbers of military students in the schools, needs coming up such as large deployments, and transition of military students.”
Services provided by CYB-MFLC are private and confidential, and no records are maintained, however, the MFLCs are mandated reporters of situations in which people are harming themselves or others, domestic violence, child abuse, and neglect or other illegal activities.
Now that the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division is slated to deploy, a majority of students attending Ursa Major Elementary School raised their hands when asked if their parents are deploying.
“Even the thought of deploying brings back memories and stimulates emotions that are there,” Hardwick said. “We believe children serve too and having the MFLC here to support those on a full-time basis is going to make a huge difference for our children.”
In preparation for the 4-25’s deployment, the MFLC representative is going around to every classroom to get to know the students personally. MFLC representatives work with the teacher when a child shows stress; teachers reach out to parents for permission to get the student started with a deployment group.
“The MFLC does a lot of things with … deployment groups and interacting during lunch time to talk about families and how to be a better child when a family member is not there,” Hardwick added. “Those skills help calm down the emotional level so we can teach at the level of success. Being able to identify what kind of emotions they have, why they are there, and calming strategies are some tactics that we want to put in the children’s tool kits, so they are equipped for dealing some difficult situations.”
The CYB-MFLC representatives are currently each responsible for two to three schools, and if there is no MFLC representative present at a schools, parents can call the JBER School Liaison office to get in touch with one.
“There are more than 150 schools and programs in the Anchorage and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough school districts, and military students are in all of them,” Daniels said. “It shows how spread out our military population is.”
Daniels added that principals are very welcoming of the program, and have shown both willingness and desire to support military children and show how supportive the community is.
For more information about the CYB-MLFC, contact the JBER School Liaison office at 384-1505 or 384-7500.