Family Readiness Groups and Their Effectiveness

[SoldiersHeartRanch]

I have worked for awhile in Family Readiness as a Group Leader. The first comment that I would like to make is concerning the value of that program both in regard to meeting regulations, and concerning concrete family support from the Army toward Families. My husband has been gone for 8 months now. The regultions, that because of my training with Family Readiness, I know to be in place, have not been met. However, with our family, due to complete involvement in an effective Family Readiness Group in previous units, our needs have been met in the area of moral support "Army Family to Army Family," and the information and resources we need during this time are at my fingertips because of the training I received from the Army through the Family Readiness Group. The planning skills taught our family through this program ensured that we were well prepared for my husband's absence. This is a testament to how well this program works when fully implemented, especially since the FRG program seems to have substantially diminished in our previous unit since we left. Regretfully, success in the areas of training for deployments and personal support during deployments is not the case most of the time, especially in the Reserves, when families do not neccessarily reside near a military installation. That problem is however, not related solely to Active or Reserves service as much as one might imagine, since my daughter and her family who have been through 4 deployments from an Active Duty unit and have had either little support, or non existent support during those deployments from their unit FRG or the unit itself. I have my own observations about what leads to success or failure in this area, but I would like to explore the thoughts of other Soldiers and family members. I know, from talking with literally hundreds of Soldiers, that support of their family while they are deployed is possibly the single most important factor of their own deployment experience.

[flyguy66]

I agree that in most cases the FRG's are pretty dysfunctional and/or ineffective. In the case of our unit, it is highly dysfunctional. As a spouse enrolled in EFMP due to TBI + PTSD, I simply can't cope with the nonsense. I have no contact with the FRG even though I am AFTB I, II, and III, Battlemind, and FRG Leader certified...and was Milspouse Magazine's 2010 Army Spouse of the Year. In fact, when I was nominated, the ladies from the unit FRG went ballistic and staged a write-in campaign to the magazine to try and get them to disqualify me. Obviously, it didn't work. FYI, my wife's unit has been deployed now for about 9 months.