MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. -- Pendleton’s Marine Corps Family Team Building program is expanding to offer more services to support Marines, spouses and extended family members.
“We have reworked and expanded our programs to support Camp Pendleton’s high deployment tempo,” said Meghan K. Jones, director, Marine Corps Community Services’ MCFTB. “Traditionally, it was all about your spouse, but a deployment effects everyone in your life.”
The expansion of four new programs kicked off at the San Onofre Community Center with “Kids in the Mist,” Sept. 20. This new program, like several others, is designed to help children deal with the emotions and challenges that come with their parents’ deployments.
Marine Corps Family Team Building is also introducing “Kids-N-Deployment” and “Kids-N-Reunion” to help children and teens deal with the stress of deployments.
The revamp of the program was the result of a functionality assessment conducted by Headquarters Marine Corps in May 2007. The results indicated the Marine Corps was lacking in support and suggested where improvements could be made. These new programs are a direct result of that assessment, said Jones.
“Marines work long hours and are sometimes gone weeks at a time without being deployed, these programs are for everyone dealing with the stress that comes with having a loved one away from home,” said Jones.
Our programs offer more than support. They offer great networking opportunities and the chance to find someone else to relate to, she added.
In addition to several children-oriented services, the traditional four-to-six hour predepolyment briefs have been dissected into separate hands-on presentations for single and married service members, said Christina E. Actis, readiness and deployment support trainer, MCFTB.
Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C., and Camp Butler, Okinawa, Japan have experimented with these programs before but bases took different approaches, now these resources are standardized Marine Corps wide, said Jones.
Marine Corps Family Team Building also introduced the Unit Family Readiness program providing readiness and deployment support to all members of a Marines’ family, those that were born into, sworn into and married into. The idea behind the program is to facilitate the communication of official information between the command, Marines and their families.