Why many military families with special needs aren’t getting help
Michelle Norman, right, advocates for her daughter with cerebral palsy and other military children with special needs as the executive director and co-founder of Partners in PROMISE. (Michelle Norman)
Military families with special needs are eligible to get medical support and a host of other resources through the Exceptional Family Member Program, also known as EFMP. Yet a new survey has found that many people aren’t enrolling in it — in many cases, because they don’t know enough about it.
Twenty-three percent didn’t know how to apply, while another 27 percent didn’t know about the program at all, according to a survey by Partners in PROMISE, a new organization led by active-duty spouses who advocate for EFMP families and, specifically, military children in special education programs.
Aside from a lack of awareness about the program among military families, the survey found that some respondents were going a month or more without any special education services for their children after a permanent change of station move.
“The overarching patterns that we saw were difficulties with transition,” said Jennifer Barnhill, the chief operating officer of Partners in PROMISE, who was a guest on The Spouse Angle podcast’s March 10 episode on this topic. “Families who are in this program do move, they have a lot of transitions to take care of with their children and things to work on and what we noticed in those periods of transition was gaps in services.”
Melissa Norman, executive director and co-founder of Partners in PROMISE — also a guest on the podcast, as well as a previous episode in Season 1 — was one of multiple military spouses who testified before Congress in early 2020 that the EFMP program was riddled with problems, including that it was inconsistently applied across military branches and even different installations within the same branch.
That hearing and other advocacy work led to a provision in the latest National Defense Authorization Act requiring the Defense Department to standardize the program across all military branches and requires that families have access to legal representation from attorneys trained in education law.
“We feel like it was overall a huge win,” Norman said of the legislation. “Now our concern is, you know, let’s take a look at the implementation of it.”
Norman said overall the military needs to work on its messaging for the EFMP program. Of survey respondents, 19 percent said they did not enroll because they thought it would impact their service member’s career, and another 9 percent said they did not enroll because of the stigma associated with the program.
Norman suggested that one way to combat this is having senior leaders with children who are enrolled in EFMP talk about the program and encourage other families to take advantage of it as well.
“If we’re talking about diversity, equity and inclusion, let’s talk about our disability community and ensuring that this is not a negative on your career. Let’s make it a positive,” Norman said. “When the family is cared for, then the service member can go serve their country without their worries of what is happening back home medically and educationally for our exceptional military children.”