Meet Anna! Anna is an active-duty Space Force spouse of 19 years & mom of two teenagers, three young adults, two dogs, and two cats. Their family has four who are enrolled in the EFMP program.
She works part time for an organization called Evolving Faith that hosts a yearly conference, and an online community to those who have struggled with their faith. She is also a full-time college student working on a Bachelor’s of English degree with an Emphasis in Professional Writing, and she is a communications volunteer with EFM. She and her family currently reside in California.
Anna’s Story
Our family’s EFMP story started while my husband was enlisted and we were stationed at Travis AFB, California in 2004, and my second daughter began having feeding issues before she turned one.
By the time she was 18 months, she needed speech and eating therapy, and occupational therapy for sensory issues.
The true impact of EFMP was not felt until after my husband’s break in service, he was commissioned as an officer in 2010 and we were stationed at Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio.
During this time, our son was diagnosed with Autism and our second daughter was diagnosed with anxiety and was not growing well (same one with infant feeding issues) due to continued picky eating.
My husband applied for a career broadening development program that allowed him to transfer to Space for a three-year period, and we received an assignment in spring of 2014 to Vandenberg AFB on the west coast.
It was a short notice PCS, and we were initially denied orders due to my son’s diagnosis and our attempt at ABA therapy and medications were making the issues worse.
We chose to go anyway and as we did not need either of those therapies.
It is my understanding that the ability to travel despite denial is no longer available to service members and their families, but would like to see official policy on it.
Our assignment to Vandenberg was good for our family and we thrived there, even though our daughter, previously diagnosed with anxiety, was diagnosed with an eating disorder at the age of 13 and the closest treatment facility was not approved by Tricare.
We chose instead to do Family Based Therapy (FBT) and bi-weekly visits to a therapist who specializes in eating disorders. While this treatment was not perfect, it met her needs.
My husband volunteered to remain a Space Officer instead of returning to his original job.
In 2017, we received an assignment to Colorado, where we had been told all of our EFMP needs would be met, and we met zero resistance from EFMP for our assignment.
Once we arrived we struggled to find appropriate care in Colorado Springs initially, including a therapist who specializes in eating disorders that could manage our daughter’s therapy.
I could not get referrals from our PCM to psychologists, psychiatrists, or eating disorder treatment facilities. For several years, I just continued to look and try to figure out how to meet the growing needs of my children, and felt isolated and alone.
The MTF (Military Treatment Facility) providers did not provide referrals needed and could not provide lists of mental health providers, but kept sending us to their in clinic behavioral health consultant who dismissed my concerns repeatedly.
In late 2019, one of our younger daughters began presenting with an eating disorder and other comorbidities.
At that time a new eating disorder clinic had recently opened up and we were finally able to get care for both of our daughters in 2020. This clinic has since shut down and the closest facilities are in Denver.
In 2021, my husband was chosen to attend CGSC (Command and General Staff College for the Army), and our assignment was initially denied until I provided proof that our daughter’s therapist was able to provide online care for her because she was licensed in both Colorado and Kansas which is where CGSC is located at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
The Kansas City area had a lot of providers, but it was not a place for a Space Officer to remain as it is an Army base. Our one-year assignment came to an end in spring of 2022, with another assignment to Vandenberg SFB (Space Force Base).
This assignment was also in jeopardy due to our family’s mental health needs and Vandenberg’s limited resources. I managed to once again prove our ability to meet our children’s current needs at the time of PCS at Vandenberg by making prior appointments, and using the medical trends dashboard and Psychology Today’s provider finder tool.
Mental health resources are limited all over the country and it is our predominant ongoing special need.
Assignment locations for Space Force are limited as there are only six main Space Force bases, two of which are in Colorado Springs.
Our EFMP family member’s needs are constantly changing, and we have not felt supported by EFMP, but rather we have felt that at times we have had to fight the system so that my husband, the active-duty member, can pursue his career without fear of losing out on the assignments chosen for him by the development and assignment teams.
This has been stressful and makes our family feel like our EFMP members’ needs are in direct conflict with the active duty members’ ongoing desire to continue serving our country.
Here is a list of some various resources I would like to share with you.
- The Department of the Air Force EFMP program maintains a medical trends dashboard in their Family Vector website. It is a two-year historical look at the trends for all of the Department of the Air Force bases, including the Space Force bases. You can find the medical trends dashboard at the DAF Family Vector website.
- The Department of the Air Force’s EFMP program’s Central Cell has a Facebook page that is very helpful while waiting for your travel clearance for your assignment. On this page they provide video updates on their processing of paperwork, and their Central Cell answers direct messages to this page as well. Here is the Department of the Air Force EFMP Central Cell Facebook.
- Depending on what part of the country you live in, your Tricare is either West or East. Both Healthnet and Humana maintain provider lists, and they can be found at Tricare West and Tricare East.
- If something goes wrong with a provider, if they behave inappropriately, if they are not providing the level of care needed, or you are not able to come to a good resolution after attempting to fix the problem with the providers or with the patient advocate, Tricare does provide the means to file a grievance. Tricare Grievance
- If you or a family member are having mental health needs, and the Tricare provider lookup tool is not giving you access to the information you need to make an informed decision regarding finding a mental health provider or resource, consider using Psychology Today’s “find a therapist” tool. This allows you to narrow down a provider by their specialties, therapies they are trained in, by location, and by insurance. The tool works for therapists, psychiatrists, treatment facilities, and support groups. It has been tremendously helpful. Psychology Today
- The Department of the Air Force provides this website page that explains what the EFMP program is and provides links to forms, information, and some resources like early intervention. My Air Force Benefits
EFM would like to highlight at the 2020 EFMP hearing before Congress, OSN was charged with standardization. In June of 2023 a new EFMP DoDI was released outlining some plans for standardization.
We are interested to hear more information from the Space Force and Air Force on how this will be implemented.
*The Office of Special Needs (OSN) is responsible for DoD policy and maintains EFMP&Me on Military One Source. Each branch is responsible for monitoring and implementing the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP) for their service members. There are specific requirements for EFMP but in general those enrolled have medical conditions that require specialty care and/or special educational needs.
*TRICARE benefits apply to all branches of the service. There are some unique aspects of being an EFMP family serving in the Space Force, though it is run by the Department of the Air Force. Exceptional Families of the Military (EFM) 501 c(3) Non-Profit highlights the differences in programming and terminology unique to the Space and Air Force in this blog.
*For More Blogs like this, visit the EFM Expert M:M Page
I relate to so many of these struggles, as the EFM. Thank you for sharing.
We decided to have my husband retire earlier than anticipated due to a lack of providers for our family and growth for my husbands CAREER in the space Force. This article could not be more on point with the struggles that we as parents with children with special needs face with every pcs and impact with job growth.