Association of the United States Army Day 2 – Association of the United States Army Military Family Forum II: Military Spouse Employment
Transcript
So hopefully, we will be successful tonight. So good morning and welcome to military family forum two, once again, I’ll introduce myself. I’m Patty Barron, Director of Family Readiness at the Association of the United States Army. Hello to all of you that joined us online. I know it was a little tricky yesterday, but we have a divot speed up and hopefully you’re clicking on to that. And you’re watching from afar, please continue to put your comments on that feed because we are pulling your questions and we are going to be making sure that we asked some of the panel and the speakers. You’ve been doing a great job submitting questions, and I thank you for that. We’re really grateful that today’s forum is once again sponsored by Geico. So thank you so much Geico for your support. And now it’s my pleasure to introduce our first speaker, someone that I’ve known for a long time and it’s been a pleasure to watch her grow in her job and her expertise and her skill. She’s a wonderful person. She’s a tireless advocate for all military families. She currently serves as the director of military community support programs for military community and family policy, or as we like to call it McFamily. Miss Lee Kelly is responsible for the leadership management and oversight of three centrally funded Department of Defense, multimillion dollar programs, military, OneSource, military and family life counseling or the mflex, and the spouse education and career opportunities program. Ladies and gentlemen, my friend, Lee Kelly. (audience applauding)
Good morning. In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a military spouse. I am an enlisted Army veteran turned social worker who loves the army very much and I’d like to start today with a tiny piece of plastic I don’t know if they still give these out of basic training. But this tiny piece of plastic is 17 years old and lists the army values. When I found out that I would have the honor and opportunity to be here today to talk with you about DOD’s commitment to spouse employment, I knew I wanted to start with the army spouse. So I reached out to the army spouses in my world and asked them for their perspective on the army values. Jamie is an army veteran with 12 years of service and has been an army spouse for 15 years. What resonates for Jamie is the army value of personal courage. She says and I’m quoting here: Being a trauma therapist and specializing my work with military families and first responders is an extremely rewarding profession that enables me to give back every single day, be it to my clients, professional peers, family, friends, or even myself. Personal courage continues to help me process my experiences and sit with others during theirs. At the end of the day, we’re all battle buddies. Shania is a 25 year army spouse and 20 year Department of the Army civilian. She says: I believe selfless service resonates most as a military spouse because it puts others in front of yourself. So many of my fellow spouses have left careers, communities and put aside their personal goals and ambitions to support their service members and this country. Michelle is an army spouse of 15 years who is an author and advocate she tirelessly advocates for the adoption of orphans overseas with special needs. As the mom of four boys Michelle has no time to herself, but she got up at 4:00 a.m. to write me this: Watching my hero and his comrades passionately protect and defend our country taught me what it looked like to defend the voiceless and the vulnerable. Military life taught me daily how to dig in, find my grit and truly fight for children who deserve the human right of a forever family even if no one else joined the battle. Without the lessons I’ve learned in military life, I don’t think I would have the passion and fighter spirit needed to truly advocate for superheroes who special needs are just superpowers in disguise. Military life showed me what that looked like. CC is a 10 year army spouse and four year entrepreneur and business owner. She says “Loyalty to my family, my community “or unit to my friends to clients and coworkers.” And as an eight year Army veteran, an eight year army spouse. She serves her community as a clinical social worker and feels connected to all the army values. She says, “They are truly in my core being “and I try to uphold them every day “to show the local community “all that military spouses have to offer. “I believe military spouses are truly diamonds in the rough.” And here is what they say about their careers. Jamie says “Flexibility and mobility are key. “I do fear my resume reflects more PCS moves “and shorter term employment.” For Shania, she says, “We have elected “to be geographically separated a number of times “outside of the assigned deployments “because I desire to sustain employment “and provide stability for the kids. “Of course, making the decision to live separately “increases our financial obligations, “removes the emotional and physical support “of having two parents in the home “to cultivate the children and strains the marriage. “Honestly, it is the most frustrating part “of being a military family.” Michelle says “I was blessed to work from home “for 13 years as the editor in chief of a publishing company “and although that meant during deployment, “I found myself editing books at 3:00 a.m. “so I wouldn’t sacrifice time with my kiddos during the day, “the benefit of working from home “and that I maintain the same job “for eight addresses and 13 years of military life. CC says, “I’ve struggled with maintaining meaningful, “fulfilling and stimulating employment, “all while earning a salary that is commensurate “with my education and experience. “I have had to transfer skill sets “figure out a way to be marketable to new locations “and industries that were present.” Anne writes, “The word that comes to mind first is flexible. “It means being the one to constantly start over, “take a job that I would not necessarily love, “but do so to stay in the profession.” These are just a few of the 200,000 plus active duty army spouses. Their stories are different and their skill sets vary, but they represent thousands of military spouses facing the same rewards and challenges. For me, personally and professionally, they all make me want to work harder to provide the best possible programs we can. With these spouses in mind, I would like to talk about the ways in which DOD has responded to the need for flexibility and impact when designing resources to support spouse employment. We have a comprehensive suite of career resources to build, refine, or highlight the innate skills each individual military spouse brings to bear starting with the hub of our program are virtually accessible certified masters level career coaches. Our coaches are available via phone and live chat six days a week. You can reach them Monday through Friday 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Eastern and all day Saturday. They are a virtual extension of the services you find on base. I mentioned their hours of availability because I think it’s important. military spouses may not make it on base during the day, they may not have a moment to themselves until 9:00 p.m. at night, it’s important to know that career assistance resume help mock interview sessions are available when spouses are available. We get questions all the time about the impact of our programs and how we measure quality. Well, one way we measure quality is by asking spouses, we have a 98% customer satisfaction rate, which sounds impressive. It also sounds like we have more work to do. When a military spouse asks me about where they should start I always say start with a career coach through military OneSource or an employment readiness specialist on base. They are real human beings, many with a military connection themselves, who care passionately about helping spouses reach their career goals, and they are great at what they do. For military OneSource career coaches, they work only with military spouses all day long. It is hard to stump them with a career obstacle. For military spouses in need of a jumpstart to their career, we have the MyCAA scholarship, a $4,000 non competitive scholarship for military spouses married to service members and pay grades E1 through E5, O1 through O2, and W1 through W2. MyCAA funding can close the gap and expertise needed to enter portable job opportunities. It can be used for associate degrees licenses, certifications. A November 2018 Randy valuation of early MyCAA data found that it not only increased spouse wages increase the likelihood of employment, it also increased service member retention MyCAA and our career coaches are also great if a spouse isn’t entirely sure what they want for a career, or maybe just needs to make enough money to pay for travel soccer. Our coaches can put a spouse in a great track regardless of the goal. For spouses ready to start their career search, the DOD has the military spouse employment partnership 400 plus companies and organizations committed to recruiting, hiring, promoting and retaining military spouses. Do we have any MSEP partners in the audience today? Would you please stand up? Could we do a round of applause? (audience applauding) I’d like to thank each of you for recognizing the value of the military spouse in the workplace. MSEP partners have hired more than 139,000 military spouses since the start of the partnership. These partners span the industry sectors. Here’s what’s new in the partnership. I find it pretty remarkable more than 63,000 military spouses have opted in to have their qualifications and information searched by MSEP partners through the MSEP candidate resume search, located at myseco.militaryOneSource.mil. Out of the more than 170,000 military spouses who have accounts on MySeco, 63,000 have opted in, here is what that means to a spouse and to an employer. For a spouse it means an easy way to identify yourself to a prospective employer who has already indicated that they want to hire military spouses. For an employer, it means being able to search for job candidates by level of education, security clearance, location, and more. Soon, companies will be able to recommend spouses within the search tool if they are unable to retain a spouse during the move. Think about the impact companies can have on resume gaps by proactively giving a spouse a recommendation. My message to military spouses at any stage of their career wondering where to turn for helping hand I recommend either walking into the base Family Center or picking up the phone and calling Military OneSource. With the thousands of resources out there, it’s hard to know where to start. Start with us, your DOD, family of resources on base or online. You may think you know us but we are constantly changing and evolving to meet the emerging needs of our families. As an example, starting one November, we will launch a new 92nd career assessment called tradefy perfect for busy military spouses looking for a bit of insight into career strengths. Another truly top-quality resource is MySTeP, a spouse transition program that starts from the moment a spouse joins the military community. It’s built around specific, short, digestible videos. I’d like to show you one one right now if Ilana tells me that it’s working and we can
[Anna] Hi, I’m Anna, and I’m a military spouse. I had a lot of questions after marrying my service member. How will I move every two or three years and build or maintain a career? How will I learn about the different resources and opportunities at each installation? Is my spouse going to make this a career or will he transition from the military sooner? It’s questions like these that make me so glad my friend told me about the military spouse Transition Program, or MySTeP. I had no idea there were resources available that make planning and transition easier. MySTeP provided me with a number of free tools and resources to help me plan for my family’s future success. MySTeP helps military spouses just like us find resources to further our education and find employment that can possibly move with us. MySTeP also shares easy ways to connect with our military and civilian communities, and point us towards tools and resources to learn how to create a financial plan to pay off debt for save for the future. Another great thing about MySTeP is that it’s available throughout our service member’s careers to me are changing me. You should visit MySTeP online to start planning for your future today. MySTeP stepping in a resource for new military spouses.
As a community we need to be connected. We need to know when there’s a young junior enlisted military spouse next door looking for work to contribute to her or his family’s financial well being. We need to know when a new family on the block just had a new baby and might benefit from an offer of help or for some new parent tips. I can tell you that another program launching in November is our new mil parent specialty consultation through Military OneSource. Checking in isn’t being nosy, it’s caring. Spouse employment is one piece of the puzzle family well being is holistic and requires that we acknowledge and support every member of the family when needed, and reach out to others as we can. Together we are stronger. And yet our DOD surveys show that service members and spouses, spouses would rather do it themselves than ask for help. There was a time many, many, many, many, many moons ago, when I was a young soldier serving as a journalist for American Forces Network in Baghdad, I would travel to outposts throughout the city to interview troops. One time I visited soldiers at a bombed out palace, the soldiers all slept in Hooche’s Outback. The staff sergeant escorting me was told to stick me in one of the bombed out areas of the palace on a cot by myself. I don’t mean to be a wimp, but it was literally a cot on top of rubble. I wasn’t gonna ask for help though. Frankly, I didn’t even know I could. Luckily the Staff Sergeant I was with knew what right look like He went quote unquote knocking on every female Hooch at 11:00 p.m. at night until he found an empty bed for me to get some sleep. I can give you a million plus examples from my time in the army and beyond of soldiers and families going out of their way to help me, now it’s my turn. And I hope that if you’re in a position to do so it’s yours as well, it’s about army values. There’s more to family well being than spouse employment, we need to recognize that we are all interconnected. And whether it’s a job lead for a military spouse, a listening ear for a couple going through a rocky time, or sharing part of our own story to help others. I truly believe the military community is a family and families look out for each other. In closing, you see the circle behind me. It’s the vast array of services provided through Military OneSource, everything from relationship counseling to adoption consultation to health and wellness coaching to financial counseling. Does anyone in the audience today have a smartphone with them? Could you hold it up? Do you have I see some hands going up. I challenge you to put the Military OneSource phone number in your phone right now. It’s 1-800-342-9647. You may not need it today, but you will have it for yourself and you’ll have it for the rest of the military community family, should you ever have a chance to lend a helping hand. Thank you very much. (audience applauding)
That was so good. Can we give Lee another round of applause? (audience applauding) Thank you so much. Lee, we have we have a little gift for you on behalf of AUSA for helping us out today. Thank you so much and Kevon will give it to you in a minute. So now it’s my honor to bring up to the stage our distinguished panel, so panel members come on up. And our panel moderator Miss Dee Guise. Miss Guise says chief soldier and Family Readiness division, army G9, where she leads a team of professionals responsible for family, child and youth and morale, Welfare and recreation. She she’s also responsible for that policy strategy and resourcing, and has so many responsibilities. I can’t list them all, but she’s pretty amazing. She has over 25 years of experience in installation management positions of varying responsibilities. She is an army wife and army mom. And yes, she’s my friend too. (audience applauding)
Good morning, thank you for the introduction, Patty and Lee, thank you for all you do. What an amazing presentation. So it’s my honor to moderate this panel this year ’cause it is a topic that is near and dear to me, spouse employment. And as Patty mentioned, yes, I’ve served as a army spouse of a now retired soldier for nearly 34 years. I have been a DA civilian for 25 years and an army mom for 13. So I, like you continue to balance family with a career. I understand the unique challenges of building and maintaining your career but also balancing the unique challenges of army life. I have taken a job with pay far below what would have been paid to my civilian counterparts, in spite of my education and my experience. I have taken a job that set my salary based on my spouse’s pay, not my education or my experience. I too started over with every move, it wasn’t easy, actually, it was really hard. Although it wasn’t all bad or I wouldn’t be standing here today, right. I learned some very valuable lessons along the way. I learned how the art of negotiating salary based on my value. I learned about the policies associated with government employment, I encourage you if you want to, you should too. I learned how to use my voice and advocate for the employment I qualified for with the pay I deserved. I know many of you learn how to use your voice too because of you. After these AUSA forums, there were two policies put in place in the army. First, the home based business policy which clarified to our commanders that home based businesses generally do not compete with AFES and other retail activities on the installations. The second is the spouse reimbursement policy, which reimburses spouses for a PCS move from one post to another. So keep using your voice. As a powerful reinforcement to your voice, the chief of staff in the army has made improved spouse employment one of his top five QOL issues and we get to hear more about that from him himself this afternoon. So with that, let me introduce the panel. Today we have a panel that works every day to provide the information, tools and connections to build successful army professions and successful army life. Immediately to my left is Miss Suzanne King, the chief of child youth in school services at the US Army installation management command. She has oversight of the portfolio of child and youth programs. We know that spouse employment and quality childcare is inextricably linked. She is going to talk about that and the efforts in the family childcare arena. She is married to Sergeant Major RD King US Army retired and oh by the way, she’s an army spouse too. Next to her Sergeant Major Chris Rock. Sergeant Major Rock entered the army in 1992 as a combat medic, and he has held numerous leadership positions in the medical arena from battalion through brigade. He is currently an army Senior Fellow with Department of Labor’s Veterans Employment and Training Services or VETS, he holds a master’s degree in Public Health. He is married to Danelle Diadarno. I hope I said that right okay, and they have two children, Faith and Noah. Next to him is Miss Krista Anderson. She is the wife of active duty Green Beret Master Sergeant Gus Anderson and the gold star spouse of Staff Sergeant Michael Simpson who passed away on one May from wounds sustained in an IED attack in eastern Afghanistan. Krista works tirelessly with many of the survivor organizations and is currently the military spouse ambassador for the army Emergency Relief Program. She is also the mother of two young men Michael and Gabriel, and she is also an army spouse. Finally next to her Mr. Matt Cross, He leads the veterans and military fair program at Starbucks Coffee Company. His focus on this is on strategic relationships and national partnerships. Prior to his position he served in the Marine Corps for 22 years, both enlisted and officer, Matt holds two masters degrees from UCLA and Washington State University. Please a big round of applause for our panelists. (audience applauding) Okay over to you.
So good morning and I’m excited, and honored to be here this morning and like to thank you for providing me an opportunity to talk to you about our family childcare program. But first, I’m not sure if anyone in the audience has ever been an FCC provider. If you were I want to thank you and all of our FCC providers for what they do each and every day, and for the service they provide to our military families. I truly appreciate all of your hard work and dedication to working with children. So the other night, I was at home flipping through Facebook posts catching up a social world, and I came across a post from a military spouse. She had recently had her first child and she decided to be a stay at home mom. She wanted to be there for her child, watch her child grow and be there to catch and see a lot of her firsts, her first words, her first steps, the first tooth. About six months later, the family has one income. And her husband suggests that maybe she would like to return to work. And she agrees. She started applying for a number of jobs. And she receives a number of offers and quickly does the math. She realizes that her salary will just barely cover the cost of childcare. So at this point, she moves on to plan B because we always have a plan B. So at this point, she’s on Facebook, and she’s looking for positions for that are our businesses hiring for evening shifts or night work. Her plan is I can go to work at night, and my husband can stay home with a child we save on childcare costs. Well, I had two thoughts. My first thought was, she has a young child at home. And for those of you who have young child they like to get up early, and the earlier they get up the better for them. I thought, gosh, this mom’s gonna work at night and she’s got a young child, she’s gonna be really tired. So then my other thought was I have the perfect job for you family childcare, where you can earn an income, run your own business, stay at home with your child, how the same hours as your husband, for the most part, receive great training, which could leave even greater opportunities and have a career that can PCS with you. Yes, become a family childcare provider. Family childcare is a profession where providers run their own business provide developmentally appropriate activities and a safe and nurturing environment in their homes. Allows a spouse to stay at home while their children are young, creates unique social experiences for their own children, creates a home away from home for their military children and most importantly provides quality and affordable childcare for the military families. So who may become an FCC provider? Well, military family members, retirees and qualified civilians living on post government owned and leased housing. Now highly recommend you speak with your husband or children first before becoming a provider. Because once you do, you’ll have children and parents coming into the home. Background checks are required for everyone who’s living in the house over the age of 12. And home inspections are required by fire safety and army public health. What do providers receive from CYS? Training and support. As soon as a provider comes on board, they’re placed on an 18 month training program which includes CPR first aid, identifying, preventing reporting child abuse, various areas of child development, special needs, creating appropriate environments and more and after completing the training program, their opportunities to earn a credential a child development associate, and to become accredited through the National Association for family childcare. Throughout all of this a training curriculum specialist continues to provide support to the FCC provider. Also, providers receive access to supplies equipment, everything to open up their own homes. They are authorized coverage under the army risk management program, receive referrals militarychildcare.com, and CYS provides business classes on running their own business organizational skills, time management, communication with parents, tax preparation and more. Also, providers receives subsidies and incentives to offset the cost of childcare. Some of these are the USDA Food reimbursement for food costs, incentives for professional days achievement and sustainment of child development associate and accreditation for infant toddler homes, special needs care, mission related and extended care. We’ve also recently finalized FCC transfer program. So when it’s time to PCS, CYS will work with providers and transfer their background checks, training and certification to the gaining installation. But currently we have 26 FCC program. I’m sorry, we have FCC programs operating on 26 installations. So what happens if you’re going to installation and they don’t have an FCC program? Well, don’t worry, we still have you covered. CYS prides itself on predictability and standardization. Our trading program is standardized and transferable between all of our programs, between FCC, Child Development, school age and youth centers. FCC providers will need to apply for positions at the CDC that may come in at a much higher level of caregiving level and a rate of pay. Finally, here giving staff is the backbone for CYS. They spend 12 to 14 hours with children every day and build wonderful relationships with children, and their parents. Many of our caregivers are military spouses. In fact, we employ over 3,000 military spouses to assist caregivers with PCSing the child and youth employee assignment tool SEE was created. This tool allows caregivers to noncompetitively transfer to the new duty station without losing pay status or benefits. And today 180 caregivers has successfully transferred. Family childcare and CYS are the perfect career choice, one in which passion may become a profession, thank you. (audience applauding)
Good morning, my name is Christopher Rick. I’m a sgt major army fellow in the Department of Labor and this morning I’m excited to share with you what is happening in the federal space for military spouse employment support. As many of you are aware in this room ’cause I see a lot of familiar faces here. May of 2018, the President issued an executive order that gave military spouses noncompetitive status within the federal hiring system. In that order, it states it shall be the policy, of the United States to enhance employment support for military spouses. So I’d like to talk a little bit specifically about what Department of Labor is doing in that space. So beyond expanding opportunities within Department of Labor for employment for military spouses, labor really developed two tools to help support military spouses outside of the Federal space for employment. And I’m gonna talk about a couple of those resources here as we kind of go through a live demo. This is a little bit interactive. So on your tables, you have a license recognition for military spouses resource guide, if you want to follow along with that. That way, if I talk fast and you don’t remember it’s all laid out there for you and you can pass along to everyone at the end of this will show you where the PDF site is to download this. And then as you walk around AUSA, please put your phone on AirDrop and share it with everyone. So let’s get started. So really what we’re looking at from a Department of Labor perspective is licensure portability for our military spouses is they gain industry recognized credentials, so that they can move from camp post and station to camp post and station. What labor did was build a site that takes all of the state legislation puts it in one location. So it is easy to find for either a military spouse are those providing them support and maintains it, this site was launched in 2018. And if we can go ahead and go to that site, we’ll pull it up now and I’ll kind of run through what that looks like. So here’s veterans.gov. This is Department of Labor site right in the middle it says military spouses. So you click on that and it takes you to the military spouse page, you scroll down just a little bit. And there’s an interactive map the United States, all of the legislation is linked to this map. And when you draw your cursor over it, it will bring up a short synopsis of legislation. And then the actual PDF of the state law. It’s categorized into shall, may, support legislation for occupational licensure boards, and then that legislation which is not really comprehensive for occupational licensure boards. So the first step for military spouses, they move from camp posting station to camp posting station, let’s say we’re going to Texas is to go to the state and click on a link to the state law so that they are armed with the information of what that states current law is that supports military spouse licensure portability into that state. All right, so that’s important and we have seen over the course of 2019 13 states change their legislation to a more supportive state of military spouses, largely we believe, because the information is now open source, and there kind of got to be a little competition between the governors of the states on who could move that ball the furthest. And that is a good news story for our military spouses. So once our military spouses understand what the legislation of that state says, then they need to understand how that applies to their occupational license. So they scroll down a little bit further. And there are the five interstate compacts for occupational licensure listed here. If they are one of the occupations that falls in this, they simply click on it, it takes them to that occupational licensure compact, and they see if the state that they’re moving to as a part of that compact, if they are not, if their occupation doesn’t align with one of those, then our Career OneStop engine here searches all state licensure boards for all of the occupations that are licensed within all of the states. So they’re teacher and they’re moving to the state of Texas. We like Texas. And they click on this and it will pull up the state’s occupational licensure board. And they click on the license of teacher. And it will give them the requirements for transitioning a license into that state. And more importantly, the point of contact information for that state licensure board, so that now our military spouses armed with the current state legislation, how that applies to the occupational licensure board within that state. And then they can build their roadmap which is laid out in this resource guide on how to engage that state when they’re preparing to move to that location. So really the step three, once they’re complete with the occupational licensure portion of it, then laying out step four, which is recommended questions for them as they contact that state occupational licensure board and ask them about any afforded opportunity for a military spouse moving into that location. So that is transition of occupational licensure. And the next thing that the Department of Labor does to support military spouse employment is afford a military spouse the same status as a veteran or transitioning service member for all DOL funded programs. These happen at the state workforce agency level in American Job Center, there’s more than 2400 of them across the country. So military spouses receive kneecap to kneecap one on one employment services at any of these American Job Centers across the nation. These range from upscaling of their current skill set to receive industry recognized credentials, job placement in the local community through the local Chamber of Commerce, in the industries that really are looking for the talent that’s out in the workforce. This is beginning to migrate in a cooperative way on installations we’ve seen Fort Campbell, Kentucky have American Job Center representation on the installation in Fort Lewis Washington, more in the future to come with Department of Labor as they roll out in the 19 tap changes and actually hire Department of Labor employment specialists to serve each installation in the Transition Service Office. So I’m excited for any questions when we get to that phase of this morning’s panel and thank you for your time. (audience applauding)
Hello. So I am with army emergency relief and I want to talk about the dogs I think our first slide there we go, perfect. So one of the things that army emergency relief brought me on to do or the thing that emergency really brought me on to do was to communicate with army spouses to make sure that they knew about the resources that we have, and that we provide. And so up here on the screen, you’ll see a Facebook page, and it’s our spouse page. And so what we’re trying to do is, is really just arm army spouses, if you will, with the categories and resources that we provide. And so our families can thrive. And so I would like to say that I think we would be going out into the civilian world, I don’t think you’ll ever find an organization that is so supportive of the whole family. And I think obviously, we’ve all but led by example from our senior leaders, and I think that they have definitely been led by their spouses, so thank you. So first we’ll go through next slide. Sorry, do I have perfect so the spouse relicensing support is relicensing and certification through army emergency relief and it goes along with the army program directly and so the intent is to relieve distress promote resiliency and overall financial readiness well being of Army families by providing assistance to spouses of regular army, Army National Guard, US Army Reserve soldiers for state relicensing and recertification fees. The eligibility is spouses of regular Army, National Guard, reserve soldiers and active Guard Reserve title 10. And tourists who are enrolled in DEERS as a dependent and so one of the things that I think is important is that it is a need based program and it is not for reimbursement and so to apply for this assistance you can’t already have applied for your license paid for your license and submit a receipt, if you will, for that so and the assistance is, received up to 180 days after your PCS. So, for example, I’m licensed in the state of Washington I PCS to North Carolina, in the state of Washington, my license is current I PCS to North Carolina, and within 180 days, I apply for this assistance and the assistance so the army will reimburse up to $500. And so army emergency relief will actually go beyond that up to $2,500. And the first 500 is alone, due to the fact that you’ll be reimbursed by the army and the addition can be looked at depending on your financial situation, grant loan or a combination of both. And so the 1034 that you do submit for the army and reimbursement cannot be submitted as of the time that you receive AER assistance. Supporting documents that are needed is a valid military ID. The sponsors leave and earnings statement, permanent change of station orders and a copy of the license or certification from the soldiers previous duty station, and then the estimate of the total amount of that relicensing or recertification in the new state. And if you’re submitting it, without your soldier, a special power of attorney is needed. Otherwise, the sign off can be from the soldier So, just to move forward some of the other opportunities that we have with army emergency relief. Next slide, please scholarship programs, and there’s so many categories with with AER that helps spouses and soldiers and the whole family. And so these are some of those scholarships that are provided. Let’s see, and please also note that they are need based, they are all need based programs. And then next slide. And then we have over 30 categories of assistance. So when I started at the beginning of the year, I was completely blown away of the categories that are available through army emergency relief. And as we’ve gone out over the year and spoken to spouses. They’re really not aware of all of the categories of assistance and so we get messages all the time. And also kind of sighs of relief of what is out there. And so, you know, my intent is to make sure that our spouses are armed with the resources that are available to them. And so we do have a table at the munch and mingle is what it’s called, I think. So if you have any, any additional questions that I can’t answer up here, we will have a table afterwards for those to be answered. Thank you. (audience applauding)
Good morning, everybody, thanks for having me. I think when I walked in the building this morning, I saw more soldiers in uniform than the entire Marine Corps has, I was definitely impressed. I’d like to talk quickly about Starbucks military commitment, and really what that means for military spouses and the military families. Because anytime that we talk about hiring military spouses are included in the same breath as veterans, they’re very important to our commitment into who Starbucks is as a company. We recently passed 25,000 veterans and military spouses hired this summer. It was big number for us. We hit it a lot faster than we thought we would. And we’ve learned some things about how to best support our veterans and military spouses. And a lot of those include partnerships, a big to start out with, or work with Hiring Our Heroes. They’ve been in our key partner in the employment space, and they really got a smart on the needs of military spouses in the last couple of years. And as a result, we were one of the founding partners of their military spouse hiring initiative. We’ve also been part of the military spouse employment program for the last five years. So that’s been a huge part of our hiring program. Then what that looks like in our stores. We have a couple of programs and philosophies behind that. One, we understand the realities of military spouses. So when we think about their needs, we think about portability and flexibility. When we think about portability and understanding what’s going to happen with PCS every two to three years, we have a program where our field management will assist that Starbucks partner, which is how we refer to our employees, find the new Starbucks store at their duty station, they’ll reach out to the management, wherever it is, if they’re going from Texas to North Carolina or anywhere else, that field management will reach out in advance and help them find that next role in their store. Because we understand they’ve got a lot more important things to think about getting their family, cross country packing up their houses, and all doing that while their spouse is probably deployed somewhere. So we take care of that so that they don’t have to worry about that. And then when they work for us, so our shifts are totally flexible. It’s not a set schedule, understanding that you have childcare duties. You have a lot of other things going on in your life, we try and make employment as easy as possible with a flexible schedule. Moving down when we talk about partner support, we have something called the college achievement plan with Arizona State University. That is a tuition free four year degree for anybody who works for Starbucks 20 hours or more. And this is a fully online program with a range of degrees. So you can choose the degree that you’re after there’s no time limit, understanding that in your routing may only be able to take one or two classes per semester. But more importantly for military families, we understand the benefits of the post 9/11 GI bill in that most veterans will choose to use that. So for instance, if a veteran comes to work for Starbucks, they can gift the college achievement plan to a spouse or a family member. And then the same thing goes for a military spouse employees so that that they can see the post 9/11 GI bill for another family member. Talking about our military family stores, we currently have 62 of these around the country and the number of them, we’re shooting towards 132. But it’s gonna be a lot more than that. And these are just off post and off installation around the country, and what they are meant as, as a place of community for active duty families so they can get outside the gates and meet their new communities, form relationships there. And we also work with a number of veteran service organization, military service organizations in those stores to provide all the resources that families need, whether they’re saying on active duty or they’re thinking about what the transition into civilian life looks like. The key partner there for us is Blue Star families. They do so much for military families around the country and you’ll find them in most of our stores. When we we talked about worldwide reach you’ll appreciate that. On behalf of your spouse’s for serving, when I first joined Starbucks about four years ago, myself and a retired Green Beret went hunting around Starbucks to find out where all the free coffee was hidden. And with our scale, there’s a whole lot of that. And as a result, we started shipping coffee, donated to units deployed around the world. And up to this point, we’ve shipped over 3 million pounds of coffee. So that’s one thing we’re proud to do. And it’s great when you get pictures from faroff places, you know, very dirty soldiers and Marines with Starbucks coffee. Another piece of that is what we call the adopt a unit program. And this is something I encourage all of you to take advantage of that we support units that are deployed through our local stores and our local districts. So if you have your spouse is deploying or is already deployed, go into your store and talk to them and say, hey, my husband, my wife, my spouse is already overseas. Could you send them some stuff and they’d be more than happy to do that. So I’m running out of time here, but I appreciate you having me here and just want to say it as Starbucks moves forward. military spouses will be a very important part of our hiring commitment. (audience applauding)
Okay, we have microphones in the room. There are also cards on your tables. If you want to jot down a question for the panel we’ll be happy to deliver that but to get started. I have a few questions on this fancy computer thing they gave me. So the first one’s for Krista, can you talk a little bit about the criteria for a grant versus a loan from AER for credential reimbursement?
I’ll talk a little bit about what I am privy to. And essentially what the AER officers will do is go through what your expendable income is. And so they have a dollar amount of if, you know, depending on your family size and such, and then from there, they determine grant versus loan or combination of both. And so the intent really is to make sure that there is that you’re not receiving any additional financial burden on your family. And so, a lot of the times, they look very closely at that, and they want to make sure that if a loan is given that that loan payment every month is not going to impact negatively on your family’s finances.
All right thank you. Do we have any questions in the room? Like a hand over here?
[Audience Member] Well, I’d like to thank Starbucks for all that you’re doing. And I was wondering if you’d be interested in expanding your program for the military dependent child as someone that you would focus on hiring, I have a 17-year-old who frequents your coffee shop regularly. (audience laughing) And it would be great if she was actually making a little coin while at Starbucks. So I think with many of us that have children that are military dependents, this would be a great opportunity for them getting some first time employment experience with an organization that supports their family.
Well, if you want to get on the phone with your daughter, now, you can tell her to go in Starbucks and apply because we absolutely hire people who are under 18. As a matter of fact, one of my teammates at Starbucks, who’s an army veteran, his daughter, who is 16, just got a job at our local Starbucks so that that’s absolutely something we do. It’s not 18 years old or older by any means.
[Dee] Okay, thank you, next question. For Suzanne, can I pardon me, can I become an FCC provider as a spouse of a recruiter? Or if my spouse is Guard or Reserve?
The answer is yes. In order to become the FCC provider, you have to live in military quarters or at least government quarters. So yes, they could.
[Dee] Perfect, I have another question for Matt. Are there only barista opportunities, or are there also management opportunities?
Yeah, absolutely. The way that we look at the opportunities that are stores, it’s really what meets your needs. If the flexibility of being a barista is what’s best for you, we would love to hire you but we have so many leadership opportunities that start from there going into store management, district management and on up and when you look at when the Starbucks headquarters in Seattle, I had met so many senior leaders there who started in our stores as baristas. So it’s a tradition of the company to really hire and promote from within. And the same thing with military spouses. And don’t be intimidated by that, you know, PCS, thinking that you won’t be able to move around because as I said earlier, we do our absolute best to find the same role for you at your new duty station.
[Dee] Okay, thank you. Okay, we’ve got some hands in the air here.
[Robert] Hi, Robert La Branch, I’m executive director of the Alabama Military Stability Foundation. I wanted to address your reciprocity piece that you have here. Alabama was one of the first states in the nation to pass license reciprocity legislation. And while it does have some exceptions, which we are currently working on, I would like you to address the enforcement mechanism and what you’re seeing across states, as far as boards and agencies that are actually complying with the laws that have been passed. We in our state have been reaching out through our lieutenant governor’s office To push on boards and agencies to comply with the law. And also we’re preparing a site that does step four for our military spouses, which is go into these boards and agencies find the regulation that suits them, and provide them an individual point of contact. So could you speak to the enforcement of these laws across the country?
So it varies by state, ’cause states all get a vote, and states are all wildly different in their occupational licensure domains within the state. Something I’ve learned over the last six months at Department of Labor, the states that are having the most success, specifically with regard to military spouse occupational licensure portability, are those states who are committing resources at really the state level. Single points of contact for military spouses to call into, Colorado does this, that then liaison With the occupational licensure boards to close the gap of education of those occupational licensure boards, because there’s many times and you’re absolutely correct, where a spouse or someone who’s providing support to a spouse will call an occupational licensure board with that state’s law, and they are unaware of it. So it becomes a discovery learning process with whomever is on the other end of that phone. So cutting out that really variance at the occupational licensure board level within the state has been a best practice and many of the states are moving in that direction. So I commend Alabama with it sounds like only kind of down that same road from an enforcement agency or oversight perspective, that is entirely at the state level. So we have had reports of employers who have required a military spouse even though that there is legislation, in the state and occupation licensure board practice to provide them either a temporary license or for them to practice with the license that is out of state that that employer is not willing to accept that risk that they are requiring them to either have direct oversight by someone who is licensed depending on occupational Specialty or some other form of license pursued within the state that requires them to have that state license and not the one that they came with. Does that answer the question for you?
[Dee] Thank you, so I have a question. I think this is anyone’s question here once a military spouse but not always a military spouse once a sponsor retires. I’m going to condense this a little bit because we don’t have a lot of time yet. What are the initiative plans for spouses after a service member retires Do we have any input? Let me take a stab at this. So I believe that there are a lot of initiatives through the VA for spouses, I know that there’s a sea of goodwill, a lot of that right here at the convention center floor for hiring spouses of veterans and veterans. So Lee, please.
[Lee] Military OneSource career coaches are available for one full year post separation or retirement to support spouses of retirees, the military spouse employment partnership members remain committed to hiring military spouses regardless of activation status. Thank you.
Thank you, Lee.
And can I, I just wanted to add to that, as well as that the programs like Hiring Our Heroes and amplify are available to military spouses and retirees. And, I mean, I think we think once a military spouse, always a military spouse. But also with army emergency relief the support is for active duty retirees and medically retired, and survivors so if there is a need for something it may not fall under the category of relicensing or recertification, but you should always come in and ask.
Great, thank you.
Dee, I just want to add to that too over here Kathy Rothuk with Blue Star Families. Yes, and Blue Star spouse force career program is also available to veteran’s spouses as well as currently serving. That’s been piloting for two years everyone in this room who’s military connected is eligible for it we have nearly $50 million of income we’ve driven to military families through that program. Average salary, including part time work is 52,000 a year, completely free to everyone also, connections to free training, average spouse who uses that gets $450 of free training Often through our partners like Onward to Opportunity and Hire Heroes USA, so I make sure people are aware of that. And then also at our chapter level where we have sponsored chapter there’s a connection to the VECO the veteran local outlets, which under Linda Davis’s community, or customer experience office is really doing more and more to try to serve the family members of veterans too. So just people can check out their local VACOs once they’re retiree spouses.
[Dee] Thank you, Cathy. So oh, yes, of course.
[Maria] Thank you, Maria McConville, thank you to all of you for being here. And we know spouse employment is a big topic and our daughter started working at Starbucks at 16 and met her husband soldier there, so it’s worked out very well for us. But my question is, my question is for Suzanne, you mentioned that the home daycare is only for child care for people living on posting, we know that 70% of the military live off posts. I’m sure this is something that you probably have looked at in the past. But what were the stumbling blocks for FCC providers who live off post? Or is there any way in the future to look for this capturing 70% of our population living off post as potentially becoming providers?
Well, we can definitely look at it. It’s the homes off post. And at one point, we had lost a lot of providers, the background checks and so on. And our FCC numbers have dwindled, we really focused on the homes on post and government quarters, but we’d be more than happy to take it back and look at those homes off post and explore the possibilities of doing that.
Thank you, so I’m sad to say that I have a stack of questions here that we didn’t get to, but we are also out of time. So we have please keep your questions coming in online, we will take these back and we will post them for you. I’m sorry, I didn’t get to your question if you’re one of the people that sent one of these cards up, but please, another round of applause for our panel and all the hard work they do for spouses. (audience applauding) Thank you.
Thank you so much Dee and panel. That was such a great panel and please receive these little parting gifts as a sign of appreciation from AUSA, I’m laughing a little because I told Matt that inside those little bags is coffee, but it’s not Starbucks coffee. (audience laughing) But he told me next year he might help us out. Before I let you go, can Beth Kabbalah stand up and get a mic, please, real quick. She’s right over there. And Beth is from the Institute of veteran and military families, and she has something that she wants to share with you real quick and then I’m gonna let you go.
Hi, good morning, everyone before you run out, thank you so much, Patti, for having us. Tomorrow. I want to share with everyone. You know, we talked a lot about military spouse employment opportunities just now. And there’s many spouses and veterans who seek entrepreneurial aspirations after they separate from the military. So we have a real treat tomorrow. In this room, we’re going to run a one-day entrepreneurship workshop. It’s going to feature entrepreneurship training from our executive director of the Institute for veterans and military families. It will feature a fireside chat with veteran and military spouse, successful business owners who have learned many lessons and are looking forward to sharing them it will have a lunchtime opportunity to go around and visit different networking tables covering topics such as personal branding, marketing, network, access to capital and the government resources that are available to help you. So all of those great opportunities and people here to help you if you’re interested in attending. I’ll be at a table for a few minutes after this presentation and we will also be here today during the networking lunch. Thank you so much Patty and thank you to AUSA.
Thank you Beth and so I am going to give you a 15 minute break. And there is coffee here somewhere I was told it’s back there. So I did think about you and please come back in 15 minutes because we’re going to have our forum number three on housing and PCS moves.