A familiar topic of discussion these days concerns the costs of raising a family. It doesn’t matter if you’d prefer to blame inflation, or worldwide economic instability, or any number of the other reasons you may hear on TV, the bottom line is it can be tricky to budget costs and dollars for parents with young children. Military families frequently find this problem more difficult then most due to the fact that it is more complicated for spouses of military servicemembers to find decent, steady employment when they can only expect to live in the same area for maybe two or three years. In turn, this can greatly affect communities around military installations where the economy is greatly affected by the fluctuating situations of the uniformed population. Thankfully, a new slate of programs from the Department of Defense should help both military families and their surrounding communities make tricky economic problems less tricky.
Last month, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced a wide range of initiatives aimed at easing problems that military families regularly face. It’s hoped that these programs will contribute to an increase in the day-to-day living situations of servicemembers and their loved ones, a concept that’s recently been a significant focus of policy makers trying to address “quality of life” issues in the armed forces. Some of the highlight initiatives include universal pre-kindergarten at Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) schools, a new Flexible Spending Account option designed to save money towards childcare expenses, and financial assistance for military spouses for professional training, Associate’s degrees, or licensing.
It is true that all these programs are designed to directly benefit specifically military families. But, as we’ve so often said on this blog, money invested in military installations and servicemembers is also money invested in local military communities. A universal pre-K program at Beaufort County’s two DODEA schools will both create jobs for new educators and also allow primary caregivers of pre-K students to return to work faster. Assistance with childcare expenses, a major headache of any parent with young children, will directly put money into local daycares and after school programs. A more unique line of effort, the military spouse educational assistance program directly invests in making military spouses more marketable and skilled in order to provide a better workforce for their local economy. In short, these programs that aim to raise the quality of life of serving military members and their loved ones, will also raise the quality of life for their non-military neighbors, local businesses, and others that they interact with every day.
The Beaufort region as a whole is an obvious winner from these new programs. More financial assistance reaching a large portion of the local population will open countless new opportunities for many individuals and their families. We at the MEC look forward to seeing how these DoD initiatives will play out in Beaufort and how we can best interact with them to raise the quality of life at both our military communities and across Lowcountry.
