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How the Federal Hiring Freeze Impacts Military Families

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President Donald Trump instituted a federal hiring freeze in January. Now, military families are feeling the effects of this executive order.

How the Federal Hiring Freeze Impacts Military Families

Have you been impacted by the federal hiring freeze?

How the Federal Hiring Freeze Impacts Military Families and Veterans

Impact on Base Services

Recently, 2 memos from different Army child care facilities have been released. The Child Development Centers (CDC) at Fort Knox and the Army garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany, have ended some of their child care programs due to staffing shortages. Both documents specifically cited the federal hiring freeze, combined with typical staff illnesses and normal staff attrition, as the reason behind the program closures.

In other bases around the world, military families are also seeing reduced hours and programs at their CDCs. Families in Okinawa, Japan, were told that hourly care programs will be suspended due to the hiring freeze.

“The CDC has stopped the drop-in child care,” shared Madalyn Sandstrom. “So now I have to look to friends, and hope for the best. The wait list for some age groups for full-time child care at the closest CDC is one year!”

The hiring freeze is affecting the DoD’s ability to conduct business as usual, according to a recent statement released by MCCS Camp LeJeune-New River. This will affect hours of services at this particular base as well as MCCS LeJeune’s ability to hire new staff members. Camp LeJeune is one of the largest Marine Corps installations. This statement could indicate impacts at other Marine Corps’ installations, as well as similar services at other military bases.

Military Spouses Face Hiring Delays

Military spouses are seeing an impact on their job opportunities. BreAnn Constantineau has had to suspend her federal job search indefinitely.

“I had started searching just before the freeze so that I could time my application to try and start a job once my kids start school in fall,” Constantineau commented. “Now with the freeze, I’m stalled. I’m also really concerned that once it’s lifted, the sheer volume of applications is going to put a real drain on the HR departments, causing even more delays.”

Spouses that were already in the application and hiring process have also had complications.

“I applied for the substitute teacher position back in October,” said Veronica Johnessee. “(I) finally got the call for fingerprints and background check the first week of January. (I) went for my fingerprints and the next day I was supposed to get the background check link via email. Instead, the hiring freeze was on the news. So now I wait.”

Johnessee’s hiring delay also impacts the students and teachers in the DoD Education Activity (DoDEA). Teachers may lack coverage to take sick days or attend professional development sessions. This means that teachers at DoDEA schools may feel obligated to work while ill. Due to lack of coverage, some non-core content area classes may be rescheduled or canceled to fill grade level classroom needs.

Military treatment facilities are also feeling the crunch from the hiring freeze. Some medical facilities are unable to hire new staff. Danielle Olmsted was in the interview process for a nursing position at Camp Foster’s Naval Hospital, but her hiring has been put on hold.

“I had an interview and was told at the interview that they wanted to hire me as a nurse,” explained Olmsted. “I knew I would have to wait awhile, since it already takes months to get someone hired and start working. Now, who knows how long it will be? I feel as though I’m in limbo, and I know the hospital can use nurses!”

Impact on Veteran Hires

According to the Washington Post, veterans make up 31% of the total federal workforce. Veterans receive preference for government positions.

With the hiring freeze, federal agencies and departments will now be unable to fill open positions. This could leave many veterans waiting even longer. The federal hiring process can take weeks or months to finalize under normal operating conditions. This is due to extensive background checks and paperwork processing.

Exemptions for DoD Positions

There are some exemptions in place to allow for normal operation in certain DoD positions and departments. Military personnel should not be impacted and child care positions are also supposed to be out of bounds as well. Firefighters and first responders, as well as intelligence personnel and positions having a direct impact on military missions, are also exempt.

However, there is not an exemption in place to hire people into the human resources department of the DoD. This could impact the speed of the hiring process for exempted positions and departments. As noted above, this could create backlogs for those who have already received job offers.

Have you been impacted by the federal hiring freeze? Tell us your story in the comments section.

How to Find a Work From Home Job

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The never-ending cycle of hunting for a new job is a struggle we military spouses know all too well. Many spouses turn to work from home opportunities as a way to remain employed despite moving every 3 years.

How to Find a Work From Home Job

Do you work from home? How did you find your work from home job?

But sometimes finding a work from home job is enough to make you question your sanity.

Do steady, dependable and legitimate work from home opportunities exist?

Of course they do!

Check out this list of work from home resources and then get to work!

Work from Home Job Boards

Telecommuting and remote work are no longer the oddball, sketchy positions they used to be. Tons of reputable companies offer work from home positions in areas like communications, customer service and project management. There are lots of job boards out there. Here are a few with good reputations:

  1. Flexjobs.com. There is a fee for access to the site ($50 per year, with options of quarterly or monthly subscriptions), but this is one of the top work from home job boards out there. Search for freelance and remote opportunities listed by hundreds of well-known companies.
  2. VirtualVocations.com. This site requires an annual fee, but offers a great list of remote work opportunities. Jobs include computer and data entry work, to writing, marketing and more.
  3. Indeed.com. Free to use, just put “Remote” in the location search field to find all kinds of telecommute and remote positions. You can even set up keyword alerts so you don’t have to visit the site every day.

Work from Home Jobs Where You Are the Boss

Starting your own business might be the best work from home opportunity out there, but it does require you to get smart on business laws and regulations. State, county and even city laws can impact the kinds of businesses you can run from home. They also regulate taxes. If you live on-post or overseas, additional rules may apply, so check with your housing office.

  1. Get Crafty. If you’re a master with a glue gun, crochet hook or paintbrush, consider turning your hobby into a great home-based business. Sites like Etsy.com, Artfire.com and Amazon Handmade take all hassle of building an e-commerce website. Good pictures are essential, so if you can’t take them, hire a photographer who can.
  2. Cottage Industries. Many states have cottage industry laws that are designed to help nurture budding home-based businesses. If you can bake like a master or if you grow tomatoes like there’s no tomorrow, consider selling your wares and produce at local farmers markets. Each state (and sometimes county) has different rules, so be sure to do your research.
  3. In-Home Child Care. In-home child care can be a great way to earn an income while helping other military families. Just like other businesses, check your state, county, city and military installation rules for running this kind of business for children.
  4. Direct Sales. If you love to meet new people and try out great products, direct sales might be the job for you. Choose from a vast array of products – everything from make-up and home goods to food and wine – and work as much or as little as you like. Some direct sales companies will even ship to FPO/APO boxes, though specific regulations and rules apply, so make sure you check with the company you are interested in and your installation. The Direct Selling Association website is a great place to start.

Freelance Jobs for Military Spouses

  1. MadSkills.com. A newly launched military spouse-owned business, MadSkills is out to help connect military spouses with companies who need their mad skills. If you’re a whiz at building websites, graphic design, project management, writing, and more, then check them out. It’s free to create a profile.
  2. Other Freelance Communities. It can take some time to build up a reputation to keep you busy all the time, but there are many freelance communities offering a wide range of freelance opportunities. Check out Freelancer.com, Guru.com and UpWork.com. Free accounts are available, but paying the small upgrade fee can provide greater visibility of your profile and open up a greater field of work. Craigslist can also be a good resource for freelance work, just do your due diligence before accepting any work listed there.
  3. Millie.com, which is managed and run by veterans and military spouses, hires “Scouts.” Scout opportunities are open to active duty, Gold Star spouses or newly retired military spouses who are willing to use their experience PCSing, buying and renting homes, deployments, community involvement and volunteering to help military families transition into new locations. This could include walking through potential rentals or letting a handyman in to do some repairs on a service member’s house.

Do you work from home? How did you find your work from home job?

How to Start a Babysitting Co-op on Your Base

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Can’t afford the on-base child development center? Do you have a doctor’s appointment and don’t have anyone to watch your toddler? Want to go grocery shopping without the kids while your husband is TDY? Craving a date night with your spouse, but can’t find a babysitter?

How to Start a Babysitting Co-op on Your Base

Do you participate in a babysitting co-op?

Military families looking for affordable and flexible child care should consider joining a babysitting co-op.

What is a babysitting co-op?

A babysitting co-op is a group of parents who agree to exchange babysitting time and most operate on a point system. When you watch someone’s child, you earn points that you trade in when someone else watches your child. It’s an alternative to traditional child care and it’s free.

Babysitting co-op members can choose to watch other people’s children at their convenience. During the day, the child is dropped off at the sitter’s house. In the evening, typically the sitter comes to the children’s house.

When we were stationed in Monterey, Calif., there was a babysitting co-op for military families. But it was only for families who lived in government housing. Since we rented a house off-base we weren’t eligible to participate. But I was definitely interested in it and heard good things about it from my friends.

Let’s say you recently moved to your duty station and you’re wondering if there’s already a babysitting co-op, the easiest way to find out is through the local military spouses’ Facebook group. You can post the question there or search the files section to see if it’s already listed there.

For bases with a babysitting co-op, there is usually a separate closed Facebook group for its participants. For example, the one in Colorado Springs gives this information on its Facebook group,

A group where fellow military wives in the Colorado Springs Area ONLY! can come together to have a close group where we watch each others children, dogs, houses on a point system. To earn points-simply help another member out by watching their kids, dog, or house. If you try to join this group your profile MUST be open and information MUST be available to show that you live here.

But what if there isn’t an existing babysitting co-op? How do I start a babysitting co-op on my base? Here are 3 things you need to do to start a babysitting co-op at your military installation.

Establish Boundaries

Who can join this group? Will you limit the amount of members? Will you require an application for membership? What are the rules for joining or leaving the group?

Like I said before, there was a group at the base in Monterey. But it wasn’t open to everyone in the military. It was only for families who lived on base. Don’t be shy about establishing narrow boundaries for your babysitting co-op. You want the families involved to trust each other and have a good comfortable level.

Establish a Point System that Works for Your Group

There can be unstructured babysitting co-ops, but I think the system works better with guidelines and boundaries. That way every participant knows what is expected of him or her.

The next step in start a babysitting co-op is deciding how you will record and track babysitting points. Some groups use a spreadsheet on Google docs that every participant has access to. There’s an honor system used and members can update that document with their points. Other co-ops have cards that they hand out to parents after they babysit. They can later redeem these cards for babysitting. Search online for templates and printables before designing your own. It will save you a lot of time.

Have a Plan for Handling Disputes Among Members

A good way to avoid drama among the members of the babysitting co-op is to have a plan for resolving disputes. Every group will have parents who haven’t earned as much time as they have used. How will your group handled that? Members need to know how much notice they need to give when requesting child care. Is it 24 hours notice? Or 7 days? Other issues that may come up are bedtime, snacks, taking the children to a playground or park, television and discipline.

I think a babysitting co-op would be a great way to earn free babysitting as a military family. With initial planning and organization, the group can run effectively and efficiently for the parents and the children.

Have you participated in a babysitting co-op in the past? What’s been your experience?

Army Families Burdened by Backlogged Child Care

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Many Army families are facing huge debt from child care that they were expecting to be covered by the Army’s child care fee subsidy program.

Many Army families are facing huge debt from child care that they were expecting to be covered by the Army's child care fee subsidy program.

Have you been affected by the Army’s child care fee subsidy program backlog?

The Army fee assistance (AFA) is meant to cover the higher cost of off-post child care for eligible families. This program was designed to assist families when on-post child care is not available or when a family is too far away from the military daycare center. The coverage includes full-time or part-time care, before- or after-school care, respite care, as well as weekend and evening duty care. The AFA has not been doing this lately and families are struggling to pay for child care.

Many Army families are facing huge debt from child care that they were expecting to be covered by the Army's child care fee subsidy program.

A Fort Jackson Family Child Care provider plays with a 17-month-old boy. Source: Army.mil

The backlog started when the Army switched from the program being run by Child Care Aware, which continues to run the program for the Air Force, Navy and Marines successfully, to the General Services Administration (GSA). The reason for the transfer of services has not been made transparent at this time.

The information on how poorly GSA has managed the program however is clear.

The problem started as soon as GSA took over program management. GSA went from managing a case load of 200 families to a significant increase by 9,000 Army families. They weren’t prepared for the substantial change and failed to put into place a plan to carry the new load. So far each plan they have tried to gain control of the program has failed and the backlog continues to grow exponentially. Processing has become so slow that as of the end of July they are behind in paying 9,100 invoices.

Army families that depend on the subsidy have waited months to receive reimbursement or are still waiting.

There are many that report falling into debt so much that they have had to file bankruptcy or had a civilian spouse quit their job or stop going to school since they can’t afford child care. A huge frustration to the majority is the lack of communication.

Staff at GSA have admitted that they have deleted voice messages and purposefully not responded to emails because they didn’t have the “luxury” of time to devote to them as the backlog of other tasks is so high. This simply outrages many struggling military families searching for information.

GSA said that they have been tackling the long list of email queries and that the number of emails not receiving a reply has gone down from 4,000 to 621 since the end of July. That isn’t much comfort to the more than 600 people left in the dark and in debt.

GSA said its goal is to pay off all invoices by the end of this year by hiring more staff. Getting fingerprints and having background checks completed as well as being unable to find enough qualified candidates to apply for the positions has delayed the acquisition of more processors. As the days on the calendar quickly tick by, few people believe they will obtain this goal. GSA is meeting with Army officials to discuss the matter and if and how the program may be transferred to another management company.

In the meantime, Army families around the country will be waiting anxiously to find out if they will be receiving financial relief anytime soon.

The holidays are quickly approaching and this hardship that many families are enduring could put a damper on travel and gift giving. Hopefully, a solution will come soon and the season will be bright for all.

Have you been affected by the Army’s child care fee subsidy program backlog? What has your experience been like?