Months after sending a letter to families forecasting the change, the Navy has formally announced the revamp of its Exceptional Family Member Program by removing the categories that were a key aspect of the program and instead moving to an “individualized approach for case management,” according to a Navy message released Monday.
The program, also known as EFMP, is designed to make sure that sailors who have family members with chronic medical — either physical, developmental or mental health — conditions have their needs considered when new orders are being weighed. The program had six categories that were largely used to determine where a sailor and their family could be stationed.
Now, the Navy says it will work with sailors one on one as part of a larger, militarywide effort to standardize the EFMP program that the Pentagon began this summer. The change was driven by military family advocates and Congress, who cited major disparities in programs across the services and different installations.
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The new Defense Department guidelines aim to improve the enrollment process for all services, offer better support during a move, and reduce wait times for medical care and services during the switch.
Across the military, the most recent survey of the program found that less than half of troops — 43% — said they were satisfied with the EFMP program, but the Navy doesn’t appear to have been a major part of the problem. The survey found that roughly 59% of Navy respondents were satisfied — the highest rate for any service.
In contrast, only 35% of Air Force respondents said they were happy with their programs.
The Navy’s new policy says that it aims to implement the changes “gradually” with the goal of being in line with the Pentagon regulations by the fall of 2025.
Still, according to Cmdr. Sean Brophy, a spokesman for the Navy’s Personnel Command, part of the intent behind the service’s policy changes is to improve the program and offer more opportunity and flexibility to sailors in terms of where they can be stationed.
The news of the policy change first broke on social media two months ago after sailors posted a letter that was sent by the office that oversees the program to families ahead of the formal policy change.
The initial reaction from the fleet appears to have been largely negative.
Many commenters expressed concerns that the change will lead the Navy to force them into taking orders while leaving their families behind, or to frustration at having to advocate for themselves and their families to someone at the personnel command every time they are up for orders.
Raleigh Duttweiler, the chief impact officer at the National Military Family Association, or NMFA, and a military spouse with EFMP kids herself, told Military.com that her organization began hearing feedback about the changes “right away” as well.
NMFA was one of the groups that actually advocated that the Pentagon put more effort into standardizing the EFMP program across the services in an effort to make it much more equitable.
Much of the negative feedback NMFA heard from families was about removing the categories — “the thing they thought worked,” Duttweiler explained.
“It was losing that sense of protection that this category provided, that nobody could argue with, and instead putting it in the hands of a detailer, who presumably will have enough time to do all of that work,” she added.
Brophy said that the categories were causing problems by not quickly responding to changing family member needs and creating default rather than tailored assignments.
“Before, it just lumped you into a category and then, by default, based on your category, you would typically get assigned to a fleet concentration area because that’s where we know the services are available,” Brophy said.
Then, those concentration areas — namely Norfolk, Virginia, or San Diego — would see their specialty services overwhelmed by the demand that the Navy was creating, Brophy said.
“If I need a health care appointment for my exceptional family member every three months, I might not actually get an appointment until six or nine months,” he said.
So now, instead of using the broad categories, the Navy says it will screen for the availability of services that directly match a family’s specific requirements.
Duttweiler also said that her organization heard from “a lot of people who brought up the fact that the EFMP system felt really limiting, and they felt like their service member’s careers had been curtailed by unnecessary geographic limitations put in place.”
Going forward, the idea behind making every EFMP family equal is that it would then force Navy Personnel Command — specifically, detailers who work with service members to get new orders — to address each exceptional family member’s particular need on a case-by-case basis “rather than blanketly just assigning them to areas that we know have care,” Brophy said.
Duttweiler, however, says that she’s worried that the new system will put a lot of pressure on detailers, who will now have to much more directly balance the needs of the Navy and fill empty jobs across the world against individual families with unique and widely differing needs.
“I think it still just puts extra stress on a relationship that’s already having to do a lot,” she said, adding that the change “highlights the importance of that detailer relationship and making sure that, across all EFMP families, there is big, baked-in trust with the detailer that is earned and deserved.”
Duttweiler, who has three children, two of whom qualify for EFMP, said, “On a personal note … those conversations are extraordinarily difficult,” and families are forced to balance keeping a trusted or well-liked specialist — who is familiar with their family member’s condition or treatment plans — with a service member’s career or continued service.
“How do we navigate all of these things, while their dad also wants to serve?” Duttweiler said.
“He’s a Marine, I am the mom, and so we come to the table with a lot of different needs that we’re trying to meet all the time, and that’s where, when I think about what we’re asking a detailer to do, I worry,” she said.
When asked about that concern, Brophy noted that detailers shouldn’t be bearing the brunt of the work screening EFMP families — “this happens in the EFMP office so [there is] no additional burden to the detailers,” he said in an email.
Brophy added that they have assigned 17 extra people to the office so that families get thorough screenings.
“One of the perks of this centralization, and making assignments more tailored, is that detailers have direct access to the entire EFMP office … in the same building to work with and ensure they understand the scope of the EFM’s needs, and assignments have the best available and accessible care,” he said.
Another concern raised by service members both online and to Duttweiler is that this dynamic will make it easier for the Navy to force sailors to change duty stations while leaving their families behind — a practice commonly called “geo-baching.”
Brophy said that “this was not an intended perception” and that the memo sent out earlier in October “only meant to indicate that, like all sailors, EFMP-enrolled sailors will have the option to ‘geo-bach’ if they do not find a desirable accompanied assignment with the necessary EFM services.”
The Navy’s efforts also follow months behind the Army, which announced the creation of a central office for its EFMP program earlier this year after receiving negative feedback from enrollees.
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