 a great day. Well, thank you for joining us for Family Forum 3, the Army Senior Leader Town Hall. Whether you are here in the audience or watching online, thank you for joining us. At this time, I would like to recognize our Family Forum 3 sponsor, the Wounded Warrior Project. The support the Wounded Warrior Project provides to our service members and their families is truly, truly appreciated. Representing the Wounded Warrior Project today is Jose Remus, Ryan Kuhls, Alex Moroski, and Ann Marie McLean. Thank you Wounded Warrior Project. I would now like to recognize and bring up to the stage the 2021 AUSA Volunteer Family of the Year, the Dixon family. First starting Dixon and his wife, Tawny, and 15-month-old son, Cameron, spend hundreds of hours volunteering and giving back to the military community each year. In the past two years alone, First Sergeant Dixon volunteered more than 350 hours and Tawny more than 600. First Sergeant Dixon shares his love for fishing through a Facebook outreach group for veterans, which he founded that provides support to Wounded Warriors. Tawny has volunteered to organize canned food drives and initiated the Junior Paratrooper of the Year Dependent Award. This award recognizes high school dependents of the 82nd Airborne Soldiers for their volunteer work. She also served as the Soldier and Family Readiness Group leader. Thank you. The Dixons were named the 2021 North Carolina Family of the Year and the 2020 Fort Bragg Family of the Year. It is with sincere gratitude that the AUSA Family Readiness Directorate and the Volunteer Family of the Year Program sponsor, Veterans United Home Loans, presents you with our token of appreciation. Thank you both for being such a great role model. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you Dixon family for your outstanding leadership, your generosity and commitment to the military community. You are truly great role models. Thank you. How inspiring. Next, I would like to introduce our moderator, Lieutenant General Jason Evans, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Installations G9. Lieutenant General Evans is the Principal Advisor to Army Senior Leaders on Installation Policy, Plans and Resources, which include Housing, Child Care and other Senior and other, excuse me, Soldier and Family Programs for all components. Installation Armories and Reserve Centers serve as the Army's foundation and support for the readiness and well-being of our soldiers, civilians, families and soldiers for life. Sir, thank you for agreeing to moderate this town hall and welcome Lieutenant General Evans. Good afternoon, man. That off. Uh, before we begin, I would like to thank AUSA and particularly recognize Holly for all the hard work you've done this week with the family forums. Thank you for being such a great partner and advocate for our soldiers and families. It's great to be back in person. Everybody. Yes, I'm honored to be the moderator for this event, uh, for this Army Senior Leader Town Hall. Members, uh, family members, be they spouses, children, parents or siblings are the strength of our soldiers. They stand side by side with them, providing comfort, support and unconditional love. They play an important part in mission readiness. The Army is committed to providing the care, support and services necessary to enable their self reliance and ensure a ready army. At this time, please give a warm welcome to Army Senior Leaders. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Please be seated, sir. Ma'am. First, I would like to introduce the Honorable Christine Wormarth, the 25th Secretary of the Army. Honorable Wormarth is a senior official within the Department of Defense for all matters relating to the United States Army and is an ardent supporter of our soldiers and their families and their quality of life. The 40th Chief of Staff of the Army, James McConville, General James McConville is also here to share his insights on his efforts to improve quality life programs for the Army. Maria can't be with us here today because she is helping care for their new grandson. Chief, congratulations. The chief also has three children who serve in the Army and a son-in-law who also serves. Finally, the 16th Sergeant Major of the Army, SMA Michael Grinston with nearly 34 years of dedicated service, holding every enlisted leadership position, brings his perspective on soldier and family support and its direct influence on Army readiness. SMA Grinston, thank you for joining us this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, Honorable Wormarth will provide her opening remarks at this time. Okay, I'm afraid of microphones now after what happened at my speech, so I don't want to touch anything. But thank you all so much for joining us this afternoon. This is the first AUSA that I've been to in many years, so I'm delighted to be back. It's terrific to have everyone back in person, and I hope next year we'll be able to be back even bigger and without masks. If everything goes well, but this is I'm very excited to have the opportunity to hear from you all about what challenges you have, what concerns you have. I've had the opportunity in the in the four months that I've been secretary to visit a number of Army installations and units. I try usually to get out and call an audible as my staff knows if I see a family person, you know, walking into a house or into off post housing, I usually try to run up and ask how things are working, what's working, what's not working. I've done sensing sessions with soldiers and heard about some of the family related concerns, but this is a terrific opportunity for me to really hear directly from you all about what's on your mind. So I look forward to the opportunity to talk with you. Thanks very much. Chief? Well thank you and you know, we talk about people first, and it's not soldiers first, it's people's first because it recognizes the importance of families. And when you think about our Army, 89% of our sardons and above have families. So all our leaders, you know, a majority of leaders have families, and that's why families are so important. You know, we talk about being a war for talent. And if we want to retain soldiers, we have to retain their families. And I've got a special appreciation for what family members and spouses and parents go through, you know, after watching my kids deploy. And you know, the thing I learned is, you know, when you're in combat, you know when to worry. But when you're a family member, you worry all the time. And you know, my oldest son was just that H. Kaya in Kabul during, you know, the drawdown. And again, that was a very stressing time for many. And I just, you know, I just kind of developed a certain level of empathy that I probably did not have before, knowing what it means to have someone that you really think highly of in some pretty serious danger. And so you all do that every single day. We are competing for talent. And that's why when we talk about people being a number one priority, that's why the quality of life initiatives of secretaries approved is so important because we want to take care of families. So we don't get it right all the time, but we have all these experts here. And this is my third forum here with the families. And we really appreciate your questions, your feedback. And some of these things will fix right away. Some things going to take some time. So thanks for coming out. We look forward to your questions. SMA. First of all, I'd like to just say a special thank you to all the spouses in the crowd. I just think about what happened in the last 18 months. It is really good to be back here. But as I look and I went throughout the travels and we were still traveling and COVID, I was still amazed that what the spouses did to help the family members and the soldier for everything that we did. And I look at it and he was like, well, you know, what was it? It made it even harder. COVID did. It's like the spouses were at home. And then, you know, I was that bad soldier is like, okay, dear, I'm off to work. And she's like, well, well, who's going to take care of the kids while they're going to school? I'm not a teacher. I'm like, good luck with that. So I did not do that. You know that, right? Hey, everybody who knows me goes Yes, you did. But I mean, spouses were still working from home and having to take care of the kids at home when they were expecting to go to school. And then you still work and then you supported your crazy husband going or soldier going wherever they needed to go. And then I just really did have a family formed with it at Fort Bragg. And imagine during all the COVID and the hurricanes and the floods, you know, we did a no notice deployment three times with the 82nd last 18 months during COVID. And at the at behind that soldier in every case was a spouse and a family member supporting their soldier. And when I talked to those family members at the at Fort Bragg, and they were just so proud of their service member. And I just want to say on behalf of the chief of staff and the secretary that it really made me proud to be your serve as an army and is proud to be here with you. And I will challenge you. And they're going to hate me for this. We are so excited for really hard, difficult questions. I know I'm going to be fired right after this. But I do this at every family forum. I say, you know, really, when you when you bring us hard, difficult things, that's what we do. The easy stuff is done. You know, if a private or a sergeant or the company battery troop commander can handle it, then why would you need the chief of staff of the army to do it? So or the secretary? So sometimes when I do ask for those challenging things, that's, that's what makes our army great. We take we may not have the answers. But we take those hard, difficult questions on and we don't forget about them. And we've had those at these family forums. So if I'm fired tomorrow, your questions were too hard. Thank you. Okay, now it's time to take some questions from the audience. You can either fill out, put your question on the card, the blank card that's in the seat next to you or the seat that you set in, or you can raise your hand and they will bring a microphone to you. I would just ask that you keep your questions concise, so that we can address as many questions as possible. We also have people that are live streaming will take questions from them. And also we have some questions that will come from the overflow room. We have a first question. Yes, ma'am. So thank you so much for giving us this opportunity. I am a military spouse of almost 26 years next month. This is my soldier of 28 years still serving. And we are also the parents of a adult 21 year old son that is incapacitated adult. We are his legal guardian. And we also have a 19 year old adult daughter who's off at Auburn. And this is my question to the audience or actually to the audience. Some of you may understand this but so we recently, because our son became 21, had to go through the new process of making him a dependent after the age of 21 for his ID card. We have been his legal guardians by court ordered since he was 18. When we went to get a new ID card for him when he was 19, I thought I would just take my court order in and that would make him a permanent dependent. That's not the case. So until he was 21, we were covered became 21. And then we were told not only do you have to file to prove again, he's disabled permanently, but we also had to prove that we were 51% financially responsible for him. Now the court of Virginia did said we are 100% responsible for him until either he dies or we die. But Department of Defense says that we have to prove this 51% on top of everything else. It's a very subjective system. I know many families besides ourselves that have to file this every four years. But the paperwork always will say that he is permanently disabled. So my question would be helpful as we want to continue serving at 28 years and maybe going forward so that we can take our son to another duty station is that that 51% rule can be removed and that the dependent that is permanently disabled can stay with us and follow us as we continue to serve. I would love to share more how that process works. It is a subjective process. Many families hit hurdles along the way. And my husband just recently we got the paperwork qualifying is so reason we could take our ball and run. But the truth is we want to change this for the greater good of the service and keep these old soldiers like my husband continuing to be able to serve so that we don't have to retire because we can't keep our dependent child with us. Thank you. So let me start by saying first of all thank you both for your service under under clearly you know some challenging circumstances and very much appreciate that. And I'm sure that the last thing that you need frankly is to be dealing with all of these additional paperwork requirements every every few years. I actually have a friend who is in the Army now retired but it sounds like has a somewhat similar situation with his oldest child who's severely autistic. And I know it went through that same kind of challenge when his daughter turned 21. I think I would ask General Evans unless the chief can add you know I think we would want to help you with one of our subject matter experts to dig into the specific issue since it sounds like it's going to in involves a legal issue. But certainly that's something I think we'd like to work with you on. Yes ma'am. If you I mean because we do have I mean between Scott Dingell and Martin a and in the G1. We have the T. Jack here. The T. Jack is here too. And the T. Jack. So there's more people here that all work for us. And I know this is a great question though because these are how we solve problems. And in fact your factory break. Thank you for bringing that up because we want to take care of you. We want to take care of your family. And what we need to do is is how to laugh this thing. Get your name. Get you guys get get a hold of that. Get the thing. And then let's work it around. And this becomes it's either you know hopefully it's policy. It's law that we got to get the law change. Laws are hard to change. Policy is much easier to change. And but we never get these type things unless people like you ask that question. And if you can see we just said four people. These are major type that have a piece of this. And and that's why we've got to take that thing. And then first of all fix it for you. But second of all fix it for the entire army. So we don't need to do that. So who's going to take the lead. Who's got the between three stars here. Who wants to I'm going to pin the rose. They're all pointing at each other. So yeah. The G one is put his thumb up. He will do the coordination. He will get with you. And he's got his and he will get it to us. So but thanks for the question. And we're not going to solve for you. But there's other people out here that have a similar situation. And those are type of questions that we they're really helpful for us. And you know we're taking a hard look at EFMP. We know you know in fact I just went through a little case with myself on a family member. Another family member. But you know we get those type cases. And they're very nuanced and we're very bureaucratic. But we got to figure out you know at the end of the day. We got to get them to the right level. And we just got to kind of move our way through that so we can take care of families. And yeah I want to talk real quickly about EFMP. Yeah just on EFMP. We've you know I've made it a point every camp post and station I go through on exceptional family member program and talk to these cases. This isn't the first time. And that we've heard unique cases where those things aren't helpful. And it's usually what we usually find out is the Department of Defense rule on this 51 percent. And that's why it's good for us to take those on. So I guess the really hard part what I found was I've actually heard both sides. One of them says I don't ever want to be in EFMP. Take it off. And then you get the exact opposite of why do I have to go through this paperwork. Again it's not going to go away. So that's the struggle is that some people don't want it to be in there and then some people say get it out. You know or I why am I have to fill out the paperwork. We are piloting this month and D can help me out with we're going to have an electronic EFMP system. So you can go in and it's like why do I have to do the paperwork over and over and over. It should be electronic. You should be able to just kind of hit a click a button and then go and do that and that's what we're working on. I'm not sure if that's going to go live. It's piloting right now is it. Yes it's piloting now. Spring of 22 Sergeant Major. There you go the spring of 22. So that will help. It may not help with the 51 percent but it will actually at least help with why do I have to go and show you this paperwork again. And that's what I heard a lot of. So that's what we're working on with the electronic EFMP program which is a little different as two years ago we talked about EFMP and me and that is not it. That wasn't the final solution. So we're working on a new system. Any questions. Okay I got no questions from the audience. Have a Facebook question here. Is there opportunity for soldiers to wave getting the COVID-19 vaccine. I'm happy to speak to that. So first of all I would say the reason that the department has mandated the vaccine for the entire military is because it's a health safety and readiness issue. You know we have safe effective vaccines that can protect our soldiers their family members our Department of Army civilians and contractors from COVID and I'm I'm sad to say that the the number of notices that I've gotten in the last few months of soldiers or dependents or DA civilians who have passed away from COVID has been increasing markedly so this is really a health and safety issue. We do have the soldiers can certainly apply for medical or religious exemptions and those are you know evaluated by our surgeon general and other senior army leaders those are considered. We also have you know counselors and people who can speak to if individual soldiers or family members have concerns about the safety of the vaccine we have resources and people who can talk people through that but there is an exemption process that soldiers can apply to. And you know for the active soldiers right we're about 91 percent right now so the you know we're you know people are getting the vaccinations you know the Guard Reserve going to go to longer to do that but the dates are coming up and you know we're providing as a secretary said medical expertise for those who have concerns about their health and safety and we can do that but I echo what the secretary said I'm just really concerned about the impact it's having on our soldiers you know let's say early on we weren't seeing soldiers you know quite frankly get really sick and die we are on the on the civilian department of the army civilian side it really bothers me because we are losing a good amount of department of the army civilians you know we're seeing people that you know I lost a former battalion commander you know that had children everything else so you know we want people to get it we think it's safe we want people to be it's safe for themselves it's safe for their buddies if they're going to deploy they got to be able to be able to do that and you know we're seeing kids get it too which is really kind of starting to bother me as you know kids are getting sick and you know so as far as an approach we're giving people a chance to get all the information they need to get the medical expert they need but there is a legal order from the secretary of defense and you know we're going to have to go ahead and execute that but we're giving people time to work through all the information they need to do it you know to their satisfaction so I mean just really quickly is soldiers says that you know well you know we didn't have it before and you know I deployed and we know we had we were sitting people you know forward deployed um while we had COVID going on we sell it and they said well Sergeant Major you know I deployed then and what's the big deal and imagine in the world that I had a body armor well before I didn't have the body armor but then all of a sudden I got this new body armor and I said well I'm not going to give it to you but you're going to still going to deploy I mean that's I know everybody's like wow imagine that we had it and it was there and I could protect you it may not you know wrap around you and save every piece of your body of your life but what if I had it and they had the opportunity to issue you that body armor before you deployed would you do it would you would you do it would you tell everybody you got to wear it would you make them do it um that's kind of how I look at the vaccine I would say absolutely and you would never question the Secretary of the Chief to tell you that you got to wear that body armor um because that's that's how we are and that's kind of how I look at it there's absolutely an ETP but but from my perspective I want to make our soldiers our family members our DA civilians as safe as we could be and I think this is the way to do it okay another question you have question okay right here general there you go all right gentlemen ma'am so I'm the Garrison Commander at Fort Irwin Jason Clark uh so my fan my question is uh with a focus on family right really resiliency there's a growing concern with increased access to marijuana and other drugs at many installations this affects your readiness with increased soldiers testing positive for drugs water supplies and environmental concerns of chemicals being put in our water tables and energy resiliency and marijuana farms that take an exorbitant amount of water to grow how is the DOD and the army leadership working with state and federal legislators to address these concerns thanks wow this is a complicated one I guess we said hard questions right there and I will defer to the Secretary of the Army I've never inhaled and that's actually true and I say that to my twin daughters who are college students out frankly in California you know which is a state obviously where marijuana is legalized and I think I don't know the exact number of states now in the United States that have legalized marijuana but I think it's over 30 maybe it's getting close to 40 so I think the kinds of challenges you're raising are things that we really have to grapple with and have not sorted our way through yet frankly there is not you know and we we still have the same drug testing policies in place that we've had in place for many years but I think what we're seeing at least from a recruiting standpoint for example and that's just one small sort of dimension of the question that you raised we're seeing that sort of run into the fact that you know many many many young Americans are growing up in states where pot is legal so you know I think we're going to have to grapple with that in a more comprehensive way than we have to date and we certainly to my knowledge we may have some of our subject matter experts here I don't think we've grappled at all yet with the things that you're raising such as for example the you know the draw that marijuana farms may have on resources we know water is scarce in states like California and Colorado so I think that's an area we have work to do I don't know if we have any of our experts who know more about that than I do but if so we should give them the floor it's here so that people can hear you online you might want to give a mic yeah not from the legal perspective but a great point and from a occupational environmental health position I need to make sure that we link with you so we can start monitoring from again the occupation environment and health hazard perspective to make sure we are testing looking at that but we'll work and get with the army staff also from the policy perspective to work with it yeah because it's about three parts to your question really when you ask it first of all you know we're going to have people that are going to be using marijuana you know it's just it and when you look at you know so what the question becomes what are the rules you know prior use is that okay you know within 30 days of showing up at the you know the at meps and you test you come up hot at meps is that okay and once you get on active duty when when does it you know become not okay and we're going to have to deal with that I think that's a problem with the use of marijuana we got to figure that one out the second thing which I think you kind of bring up is you know people I've been out to NTC so I think I know what you're talking about is you know they're just growing it out there you went through climate change in and you throw in you know the the the desert for desert vacation that's going on a place like NTC where you know where water is very very short so who gets access to your water if they kind of suck it all out so they're growing you know pot with it you're left in a very difficult situation so to me that's more of our insulation question and legal so who can take that one on that's the second part we'll take it as part of the environmental work with AMC you got the environment yeah and we got the environmental take that one on okay you got that one who's going to take the one on I guess the recruiting one who's got the recruiting one that would be the trade-off to me oh we go trade-off we got okay good well here's my here's my role I just want to make sure it's not me you know sorry look at I'm trying to get this thing rolling downhill you know so the buck will stop here but I'm passing the buck to the right person I got it all right any more questions from the audience do we have a hand hand okay go to Facebook question from Sabrina are there any efforts being made to improve response to domestic violence and support for domestic violence victims this is a great question it's frankly a sad question that we have to be um talking about it but I think it's fair to say the chief and I and the SMA are very concerned about domestic violence right now there have been some prominent cases uh and and I think this is something that we're you know the pandemic the isolation of the pandemic a lot of the experiences the high op tempo that our folks have experienced I think really show that we need to be focused on this and you know really I think what we're trying to do here is two big pieces first of all the prevention side I mean really ideally what we'd like to do is catch families that are having problems and support them before some you know before violence happens and that's really what we're trying to get at things like this is my squad making sure that our leaders are looking and promoting a healthy command climate programs like the strong bonds programs that we have offering things like financial readiness counseling that sometimes the financial concerns can be a stressor in families so we're going to be continuing to focus on that side of things but also making sure that if there is a situation where violence has occurred in the home we're providing resources to the victims and making sure that cases are investigated and that people are held accountable and our our tjags and um judge advocates you know have a lot of experience in that area CID obviously is very experienced and I think we have done a good job in past cases that I'm familiar with of rectifying the situation separating people and making sure that a victim supported ma'am karen carlaw from tjag has some comments to add ma'am if i could just add on that's loud just to since december of 2020 domestic violence victims are eligible for svc services and so special victims council so that's a new program ma'am since you've come on and then also our legal assistance offices have also been representing our domestic violence victims as well so just wanted to make sure that those services were out there yeah there's some things which we're trying to do you know at least in the arm and this takes time and you know the secretary talked about this is my squad but you're the idea of building you know these cohesive teams at every single level and and really giving people access or feeling that they can trust someone they can go to whether it's sexual harassment sexual assault whether it's suicides or behavior health issues or it's domestic abuse type things it's like who does that person go to who do they trust that they can call because a lot a lot of times you know that will happen is they don't know who they can go to and you know and ideally we want them to go to people that when it's really early on you know we have we have programs we certainly have family advocacy programs we have strong bonds and program we want strong bonds to really be for weak bonds not for strong bonds you know i mean we want to try to identify those who need help but how do we build organizations where a spouse feels comfortable going to somebody in the military or someplace where they can get help and where a spouse feels comfortable that if if he or she says something that you know the person may be not going to lose a job or they're not going to be you know cast out there's just a lot of challenges that i see a spouse didn't want to say anything i don't want to say anything it'll hurt his job or hurt her job or if something happens i have no place to go and know what to do so they're willing to stay in a relationship that they probably shouldn't be and quite frankly we've had some really bad cases over the last year too in particular that we want to try to get in front of so as we move forward this this is what we're trying to get to is a safe place where when people aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing they can get help and they can get advocacy and they get the problem fixed first of all there's no room for domestic violence in our military and i'll address it from two perspectives leadership and policy that's what we're talking about you got to know your squad if i say hey i want to come over let's make your life and you're like no you can't meet my life or you know that'd be odd you know oh i'd like to meet your spouse no you can't oh really you know so that's knowing the people that are right next to you asking those simple questions we've been talking about this for two years that it really does start with leadership and looking people in the eye and saying hey how's it going you know if people don't make eye contact in the u.s. that's a sign that maybe so you have to be able to notice that something is going on you may not know what's going on but i'd ask every leader in the army to go out there and just talk to your people their families and if they say no it's like um why is that you know uh goodness i'm not your first aren't i didn't i was like hey i'm coming over what day so um legal we don't need a legal thing on that good um so that's number one number that's leadership number two policy we did look at this we said there was an issue because maybe a family member who's going through domestic violence so our rules were about two years ago if i got separated i got no money i know not legally if you were divorced or i had to i i could give you ba h or something like that that was it but there was nothing if i separated and i and i wasn't going to think other than ba h it's like well i live in housing i don't i don't get ba h because i already have housing so how do i how am i willing to say to my family member this person is abusing me they're going to cut off the money i can't feed myself for my children how do i do that so that was one of the policies changed i think it was 20 percent of the pay you have to legal they're all going yep you got rights are major so we said hey if you're going through something not just the bh that you will have you will take care of the money for your family so you can speak up and say hey i'm having a problem don't use if you're having issues and you can't get the money we're going to make sure and that's why we changed one of the policy i think that was last year or in the last two years and legal or just saying something like that so that's the policy perspective to look at it so we could actually do better with domestic violence complimentary ma'am to the prevention space that you mentioned chief we've also noticed in sabrina a great question that domestic violence also usually does not stand by itself uh so from that we've seen sexual assault sexual harassment as well often drinking issues alcohol as well so part of our prevention model which sir your task force is looking at is way far left can we give a healthy marriage class can we give a financial planning class that hopefully you won't have to measure negative three four months or three years down the line so that's the trajectory we're moving on now thank you question thank you um my name is ronnie trend i'm a retired registered dietician after serving 20 years in the army and my question is about food actually and along that same lines of stability and stressors to the family from the last question for most of my 20 year career we talked about obesity and that was the battle i was fighting and trying to frame it for leaders in terms of a readiness issue right and and and frankly what it's doing to our to our country as a whole in readiness but in the last two to three years it's really been about food insecurity and we have a lot of our msso and vso partners that have done actually very good research with the usda surveys that have actually shown that one out of every six soldiers or households that have soldiers in them are now affected by food insecurity in this country in the united states today so my question is or my concern really is when i have talked to my peers retired lieutenant kernels kernels my husband myself and i say to them i say think back when did you think about food for your soldiers beyond Thanksgiving and Christmas baskets and things like that and they said well if we thought about it we turn them over to the sergeant major or we turn them over to a or or something like that but when i talk to leaders today and i ask about that i'm getting the same answers so my my question for the group up here is what are we doing differently to frame food insecurity differently and to think about it holistically in terms of the answers that we've just given about stressors on the family and the downstream effects on that that include violence and what not too thank you madam secretary you want me to go you know there how about it yeah yeah jump on the that's actually a it's a good question we we talked about this in the survey that came out um i did ask you know a survey and i'm not going to question the survey it was it was a small sampling but the food insecurity um i really looked at it from a different perspective of do we pay our service members enough to support their families i mean yes or no so because then we're not going to address the proper question so we have added and we're we're not there yet especially on the enlisted because most of if you ask any soldiery one three four even the ones in the living barracks today did you worry about food and they're like yeah i'm like well we got a dining facility so um so those are some of the questions so it really led me to believe is you know it's a question of are we getting paid properly and if we are then what are we doing with our money and that's where we've implemented financial training i really like to say yes we've been doing this for 200 years from enlisted we have not at the basic leader course we have implemented financial training at the basic leader course and we're going to go all the way up and trade off has got to lead and we're going to teach classes on how to manage your money all the way up to star majors academy because we got to blend in retirement so there's the two parts of it is you know fundamentally we have the baseline study of what the services get paid and if that isn't appropriate that's a different problem the other piece of that is how to manage your money did you get a car did you get this really nice car and a really nice boat and a motorcycle and i can't feed my family and i'm not saying that's what's going on absolutely not what i'm saying is we have to manage the money that we have and then we have to look at it in a perspective or are we getting a paid and then the q r m c i think was what the quadrenial defense review on military compensation comes around every two years to look at do we get paid and the last two years and that's a do d says yep we're you know that's good every day's going great we do have some proposals to relook at that and we're not ready to roll that out but we are working with i'm working with the ciak and do d to see you know do we have compensation right but on the left of that can we manage our money appropriately and then the third is we do not want any family in the united states army to go hungry without food we will get you food we i promise you could you know right here right now turn them over to the serve major we talked to deca and they said yep we we donate you know food all the time to food banks and you're right a r is there to help we have to know you need to help you know we're not going to stand by and let our families go in need we have plenty of programs that will help and make sure that our families are fed you know it just kind of out on the food i think people looking at food very very different than we ever had before your registered dietitian i married one it's better than a gym pass trust me but you know i think what i think with the young people that you know the people that we're getting in general funk and what they're doing a trade-off with holistic health and fitness we're putting dietitians in the brigades you know so they're going to have that that type of thing we think it's that important not just the fact you have food available but really what type of food are you eating and it has physical and mental ramifications so the fact that first of all people have to have food but they're going to be eating the right type of food and you talk about obesity and everything else and you know those who study it and you know a lot more about the me and the folks that are actually you know do that stuff for a living is food's one of the most important things what you eat when it comes to weight and everything else and muscle and doing all those type things is really important so that's part of our holistic health and fitness program that that we're putting into every single unit so we're you know we're really getting the experts to help us that with that and i think that's a way forward but as son major said we're not going to have any soldiers or families that are going without food and you know when people ask us because they'll ask me because the first question that we get asked is what are we going to do about it well do we raise the pay which is one way to do it or is the pay sufficient if you don't have debt if you're not you know spending your money in other places and you know you may not you know at least you know I grew up from humble roots so we didn't drive BMWs and Mercedes and in my household you know and and so we just have to take a look and make sure they have an adequate amount of money and if they don't for certain reasons then we can help them with that too but it bothers me because I've heard about this just you know as as we so and we're going to make sure just like if someone's not getting food and they can't you know get help then come to me the sergeant major we're not going to let any army families go go hungry at least as long as I'm the chief sergeant major sir I do want to alibi one is because you brought up a good point that I didn't realize what we did in the study too when we look at it it's a lot cheaper to make the food in your home and that's what's important too about what you do is that not only can you save money well where again it goes it's not just about what you buy it's where are you buying your food if you're buying your food making it home it costs less if you're eating out more so that's what that that food has a lot to do with it where you get it how you prepare it is just not a nutritional value it also saves you a lot of money if you're if you say I'm doing this but that costs twice as much if you do that you'll be out more so that's why we're really trying to look at it from holistic health next question Christa right here in the front and any questions about AER you're right there yeah you can't hide behind the mat that's part of it one of the things and I'll speak I guess from my name is Christy Anderson I'm not only a gold star spouse but the army emergency relief military spouse ambassador and actually my husband's retiring so I think I've checked a lot of the marks off throughout this journey but one of the things that we see is that stigma of our service members and their families asking for help and so at AER one of the things that I have kind of sat back and looked at is other organizations that are outside of AER are offering very similar assistance and our soldiers and families are going to them instead of coming to AER for I'm not really I'm not really sure why but I think a lot of it has to do with the stigma because some of the mist that are out there are if I apply for an AER loan I'm going to lose my security clearance or you know I'm going to have my commander is going to come down on me hard if I apply for a loan or I get a grant and so some of our our partners have looked at the I guess they're calling economic and security rather than food and security now and so how do we put faith in our soldiers and their families that they can come to AER and they can get a as General Mason says a a hand up instead of a hand out and really be empowered to to set up their family for a successful that could be General Mason kicking something over in the back right now overflow room so empower them to really set their family up for you know financial success in the future and I'll lead off if anybody wants to chime in too it's always great to see you AER that's why we changed at one point we said well the whole chain of command has to know about where you're getting this loan and all the business our majors were up in the roar and we said no company battery troop level can approve I think it's a thousand dollars right there just go help they sign it and it's done so we didn't want to go outside and what we also found is that they're still going outside the chain of command so you know what AER did you know we said well we'll pay off those loans for them so your army emergency relief found that some soldiers didn't want to go and we found those organizations and AER said okay that's a military family we'll pay it off so we're the army emergency relief is going to do everything that they can to help our soldiers do that and that's a true statement that you know I'm not making that up so um but we really do we've tried everything we still need to have somebody that signs off on the paperwork that says yes you're going to get a loan or a grant on what that looks like we try to push that down to the lowest level so you don't have to go to the battalion commander or somewhere else so I agree we can see the stigma of you know I don't want to go to the bay of health I don't want to do this it's not true ask if you need help that's the whole point that everybody needs help the sergeant major in the army needs help if I do I got my squad and I'll ask them like chief I need to do this you know every time I said you know I can't be at this I'm gonna go to my daughter's something you know what he says sure there's never oh well if you have to sergeant major that was never there and it's the same thing when our soldiers say they need your help don't don't go oh if you have to or anything like that just so okay and then you know what he's being better is I'll go with you I'll take you to wherever you need to go I'll take you to AAR I'm not gonna judge you I'm gonna go with you to make sure we get you what you need and until we do that more I think there may be but you're not gonna lose your security clearance if you go seek behavioral it's just not gonna you know if you do something really bad you know and then you go to behavioral yes you'll lose your clearance for that but all these other things there is this stigma about asking for help and I'd ask us to as much as we can for every leader spouse family member DA civilian is to say it's okay not to be okay it's okay to seek help if you need a help with loans we're gonna try to do the best we can so thank you okay I was just gonna add to that Krista you know I think the specific question you raise does speak to the broader challenge of stigma across the board for asking for help you know whether it relates to food insecurity or whether it relates to behavioral health people who are you know struggling and perhaps having suicidal ideations we really do have to work I think every day at all levels to message that it is strength not weakness to ask for help and to when someone asks for help to reflect that back to them you know to to walk that walk not just talk that talk because I think that we do have resources available but they can only help when people avail themselves of them and I think the myths that are out there around what might happen if you seek help are just that myths in a lot of cases and I think we really need to redouble our messaging to try to bust those myths so that people aren't afraid to ask for help when they need it okay I'm accumulating Facebook questions so I'll take a couple of those and then come back to the audience this question is from Holly Duncan are you aware the families being affected by autism care demonstration many beneficiaries have had their ABA applied behavior analysis therapy hours cut in half or even worse have lost services I would welcome the opportunity to brief leadership on how families are being affected I was just gonna say I think we would we would certainly welcome getting briefed on how it's affecting Miss Duncan specifically and I know you know autism is a challenge that a lot of families have again I have good friends who have children with autism or who are on the spectrum and know the complexities that can come with that we have a challenge with behavioral health resources generally the whole country is struggling with that and I think unfortunately we are feeling that impact as well but certainly want to try to work with families to make sure they have the resources that they need and I think I would go to General Dingle to sort of maybe speak specifically to some of the autism related programs or resources we have on the turn that was on Facebook so absolutely I welcome the also the opportunity to hear from her the briefing in relation to her specific case in addition to that as we work with TriCare the DHA on services provided this is one of those hot topics that are coming up and as we go through the decision making processes on the type of care and where we're providing that this would be a welcomed opportunity for us to hear as we establish policy working with the defense health agency Colonel Burnett anything you want to add to that okay this is a MWR question I'm sorry before you move on will I be able to get her contact information I got it I got it okay thank you got you okay MWR question from Brandon Roggenbauer some unit commanders have reluctantly are reluctant in supporting MWR so most lower enlisted feel their commander's perception is that recreation detracts from the mission the question I have is that would soldiers be better served by programs like boss if they were staffed by professional civilian counterparts who are free from duty demands I think that's a good question and probably not going to like the answer I would say no to me it's about being a good leader you're probably going to hear me say this a couple of times but if your leader doesn't believe that you need some time to do recreation I could put all the policy and everything in place and the leader says no you're not going to do it it's not going to solve the problem we have programs like the better opportunity for single soldiers because we believe that recreation does help soldiers get out there's another one so I really put in when we talk about building a cohesive team how do you do that and we and I said well where can I get some money like Sergeant Major the money's already there I was like where there's better opportunity it's DOD money it's even better I don't like to other people's money so it comes from DOD to support the better opportunity for single soldiers to build a cohesive team and one of those things that you can take all your soldiers out and do are life skills it's a program that's funded already and we did it at a former big red one division not to be the name that division we took the soldiers out and went to K-State and the University of Kansas and said can you teach our soldiers these life skills and we had the money to do it and wait a minute but there's this other thing called warrior venture quest that's it's still there there is still money and this is I can go out and fund a bike ride it's called the warrior venture quest and those programs still exist we just need to know that the program exists we need to know where the money come from and then how do you get access to it because I double check because I said where do we have these these funds that we can build cohesive teams and it's not just first of all it is great training go out in the field sleep in the rain on the ground everybody should do it right everybody everybody wants to do it yes spouses yeah I can't get my wife to do that but that builds a cohesive team but there's other ways in those MWR funds that are available right now that you can do that not just the army but DOD thought it was so important that they would fund these two programs to give you those recreation so I think you know saying okay I'll put a person that's in charge of that in that installation so it'll have emphasis on it when the leader when General Funk says we're gonna do these life skills at K-State and University of Kansas then we do it without that I would say that maybe we don't do it okay yes sir in the back what bringing a mic to you the voice in the army okay thanks they can't hear you on the internet yeah the live streamer won't be able to hear you okay got it so given the focus on people first disinformation thank you secretary and information advantage and threats to forced submission and families from disinformation are we open to teaching and assisting soldiers in their families to protect themselves from disinformation by adversaries and other forms of predators that's a great question and you know I think the answer should be if if we're not already doing that I would certainly be in favor of doing that uh coincidentally prior to becoming secretary I most recently worked at the ran corporation and you know they have a whole part of ran that supports the army directly the royal center but ran actually did a fascinating study looking at for the state of california frankly that was aimed at trying to help voters identify when they are being you know targeted by disinformation campaigns and it was very interesting because uh there are there are clear patterns and you can definitely help individuals become more educated consumers of information and particularly when we see our adversaries going out and trying to get the PII for our soldiers and their family members you know there's a lot of information that's out there on the internet that we do not want our adversaries to be able to leverage to you know potentially hold our soldiers and families at risk so if we're not already you know I'm still pretty new here but if we're not already doing things to educate our soldiers and families about disinformation I think we absolutely should because it's important and it's a real part of the security environment that we're in now okay we'll go to household good question from Facebook this is from Christina Marie right now the whole country is experiencing effects of labor shortage and the shipping industry does the army have a plan for families PCS and O'Connor to receive their household goods in a timely manner is there a plan to help with compensation for those families if their household goods take up to six months to arrive what is the big picture regarding how this all will impact the military overall sounds like a perfect question for general oh well well yeah yeah if we're yeah you're gonna say something before we go yeah I you know we've done a lot of work on permanent change of station moves and you know there's been actually you know a lot of things done from hiring additional people to make sure they work and all these other type things and quite frankly with COVID and people not working we are in a very different situation than we were before but you know we've done some things with temporary living expenses as far as giving people more time for that we've done things with personally procured moves it go up to 100% to incentivize those type things but we're still seeing people going overseas and some really problems so the way you're gonna tell me how we're fixing all this stuff sir before we the specificity that general game we'll have will be amazing we've talked about this several times I do want to say specifically about O'Connor smooths because that the personally procured move won't help you so yeah I mean I guess if you've rent a boat so overseas is Alaska so I'll give you that one but I think there is a little bit of skill in this and for as we drew down a lot of forces overseas we did lose some of the knowledge of what we do overseas versus conus and I'd ask you to really dig in to what's available overseas sometimes can help you in an overseas move and I'll give you the example and I'm not sure if we still do that but the last time I moved to Germany that we give you rental furniture for free so so it's a little bit of art in this is saying where as the reverse was I didn't get that if I wanted furniture and my furniture didn't come then I had to personally pay for that furniture when I came back from overseas so the art in this sometimes is again know your soldiers and if you don't know the answers please ask so somebody that's moved overseas like you know six or seven times that I shift my stuff early so that'll are when it's coming back and then I use the rental furniture overseas so I don't have to use the rental furniture when I come back to be conus so I think there is some art but we are in extraordinary times on delivery times especially when you look at going overseas and some of the programs just if you don't have a little bit of art in the the move of going overseas it could cost you a lot of money if you don't know that overseas they'll give you that furniture for free and over the states you don't so you'll you could do something that wouldn't help you if you're doing an overseas move and since I've moved a whole bunch of times overseas I just wanted to throw that out and now on the specifics on that sir thanks sir thanks our major so my name is Dwight Gamble I'm the army g4 there's two two things first to the question about what are we doing specifically for overseas moves from start to finish it's a little bit of an ecosystem right it's a process and sir major alluded sir major army alluded to this a little bit so what we are doing is putting orders in the hands of soldiers much earlier than we've ever have before so everybody knows that you know gary bridow and hrc the g1s of the world the human resource managers cut the rfo but that's the installations that cut the orders and so general under general daily and general gabin's leadership orders are in the hands of soldiers we're shooting for 120 days so that we can put the demand signal on it on a very stressed industry and we have transcom with us here today they can talk about you know mitigation to what they're doing with industry but i think that's the most important thing and it services both o'connor's and conus moves and then i'll just phone a friend when mr. candler's here he works for me he'll talk about army can to the specificity yes i may was expecting me the the convenience claims all right the inconvenience claims and what we've done to increase those for inconvenience that's based on the mover the shipping company not doing their part and hold so we're holding industry accountable transcom's helping us with that and we're doing so in both organic army inconvenience claims process and then transportation you know the transportation service provider in in convenience claims process so there if you're here can you just help me with the details on inconvenience claims yes sir one of the things like to mention is and you know i'm really surprised that we haven't made this available to a lot of people inconvenience claims you know we negotiate a time point from the point of pick up the time of delivery so let's say for instance there's a report not later than date that that moving company is responsible for providing your goods if that moving company does not provide your goods by that report not later than date then you are entitled to an inconvenience claim so what is what is an inconvenience claim so we pay for them not to include logic so for the first seven days you get you get pre-dem allowance for any time that exceeds the delivery point or delivery delivery time now for instance if let's say after that seven days you come out of pocket and it's more than the pre-dem cost you can provide a list of items that you have paid for and that moving company will reimburse you for that amount and that's to help you uh to defray some of the costs for the moving company not meeting the time standard pass it over transcom yeah go ahead go ahead transcom just hold a second we got got a four so madam madam secretary chief I think the to put a final point on what was just talked about in terms of magnitude 2,500 plus claims for convenience at 1.37 million dollars that we've paid out to soldiers so understanding this program understanding that we're holding the carriers accountable and there is a process to get reimbursed I think it's critical then the long-term approach to transcom we'll talk about here is that over the next 18 to 24 months they're gonna revamp the contract now it already is as Dwayne Gamble talked about a stressed industry because that changes and it does will transcom adjust the contract to better be more responsive and then the second contract they're gonna adjust is is the software program DPS because we all know it's very very difficult to work your way through that very difficult to maneuver and quite frankly it's not as responsive as it should be so so that's a long-term approach just to put a final point on yeah I think it's really important though we get this information out you know I've only been doing this a little over three years I'm sure you know and I never knew about half this stuff so I think it's really important that you know some of these benefits are available to families in tough times we're gonna make sure they they know they're available because I'm you know it's like a while back you know we we did a good job and you know like dislocation allowances people it's almost like a hidden thing if you didn't know the secret you didn't know how to get one we're you know you know it's it's a benefit you should be getting so transcom yes sir as many you know I'm an Air Force officer I'm I'm the new director the defense personal property management office I'm not an Air Force spy I'm a long nose just like I said I was going to quote some of the same numbers but but I won't repeat them but what I would ask for is your help one is make certain that people do those interviews claims because if you don't it doesn't put pressure on industry to deliver and like they announced this year alone 1.3 to 4 million dollars to the Department of the Loan about 3.7 million dollars to the entire Department of the Defense so please fall through with the paperwork at the same time as we talked to industry and try to get an idea of hey is this going away is this going to get better they'll tell us that next year is going to be slightly better but but really the key emphasis is on that slightly better it's really going to be a very similar environment to what we're in now and I would encourage you to watch the news I would encourage you to pay attention on what's going on you'll you'll hear various news articles various things talking about labor shortages talking about the ports at Long Beach and and Los Angeles and and how there's delays there whether it's you I mean just go to your commissary I know I'm at Scotty for a face and you go to the commissary and they say hey take one thing of chicken each because supply problems my wife goes to the BX and I'll say hey you know whatever her favorite item is just isn't there this week so very similar problem across all sorts of industries when you see those other problems get solved you'll probably see the household good situation get solved when you see those other problems continue to struggle across other industries you'll see it continue to struggle across the moving industry as well yes sir that goes into a wider range we do letters of warning that kind of tells industry hey we found you at fault for a particular thing and if there's enough that add up a particular area a particular trend we'll do a letter of suspension which then suspends them for 30 days so once again kind of financially incentivize them to perform to a standard and in some cases instead of just doing a 30 day suspension we'll do a a non use where we just say hey you're not going to be used a particular thing get solved in the last year alone we've had about 1500 letters of suspension and we've had about 313 situations of non use so basically those that continue to perform and do well we'll keep going back to them again and again and again because they're performing well and those that don't will hurt instead of financially I got a question on the moves just gonna make that this is for the family so okay so I gotta you know I gotta be some place let's just say one December that's the date I have to report you go to travel we try to make a you know and the the movies won't give you a date where you have to be there so what they do is you can deliver but it's gonna be in February but you have to be here one December so how does that how does that work with this inconvenience thing because they could just say hey we're not gonna deliver to February or can they do that or how does that work so they and just like everybody else Secretary Smith passed out on the left lane feel free to jump in and correct me but when it comes time to depart you put in a a departure date and we built into the rules of seven years ago to set up your departure date and then of course based on the distance and when you're moving there's some time for people to get you there so you should be able to figure out and it's you know if you're going one state away one different thing going around the states to get you but you should be able to figure out based on when you depart to when your things should be there yes sir and then on the this chief and you know on the order side if you're trying to pack your household goods and they don't show and you have a report date and you scheduled it and we've had this problem this summer too it's like okay well I'm scheduling my household goods on one December and then they don't show and you got a report date at 10 December we did say in the order is that you get 20 days past your report date to or is it 30 yeah okay I was just looking at the guy I find you say I have three fingers up so so trying to read the hand and arm signals up here sorry so yeah what one last point chief yes about how we get the word out one way where we are working multiple avenues about within the last two years and I just encourage all the families to download it it's on the app store it's an army pcs app it's informational we put that out within the last two years and then this year we added a 24 seven live chat feature so if you don't see the information that you require whether it's an inconvenience claim you can search it it'll take you to what would be on an in an army regulation if we had an army regulation for pcs moves we've been reliant for decades on the defense travel regulation Mr. Candler and Gene Thomas sit next to him are two heroes that are carrying the weight for the army they are developing an army regulation for pcs moves that'll be out we hope in the next year but the kind of the intermediate step is this pcs app it's informational nature it has all the information that you didn't have access to before quite candidly from an army source now it's one of the army pcs app but again we create this live chat feature so if you have an issue and it's not directly addressed in this informational then please just chat us up and a human being we'll interface with you on this app put one more thing and I ask everybody in the room online please do not do unnatural acts it goes back to what we're saying don't wait and just ask for help I mean we've heard it all and it at one spot for them it's like my husband just pcs us and you know our household goods are 20 days later and he's already at the new duty station and we didn't know because we just got great soldiers we really do and I'm gonna get this mission done I don't care why fear it out with household goods either and there's a kid so I'd ask if you're going to chat you know these leaders would see that happening that's number one but please just say hey it's extraordinary times the movers didn't come but can we just can we get even further than 20 days we can we can do all that we can't do it all if we just don't know so I would just if you're going you're struggling you don't have to struggle with it whatever this is by yourself and I've seen a lot of great leaders just go through these things and they'll get there and they'll get to that assignment and they're gonna do it and their family's back there and then just like I hate the army so we don't need to do that that's it's one thing I'd ask it's time going back to the inconvenience claim one of the things that has been a little bit frustrating trying to figure out that the inconvenience claim it doesn't seem to be really black and white it seems that the moving company may have the ability to make decisions on what's approved and what's not approved as far as what's going to be reimbursed so there's not there's guidance out there you can find articles that kind of say well they'll reimburse you for renting a washing machine and dryer or x, y, z but it's just guidance and like articles I can't find anything that's just black and white what is it that they will pay what is it that they won't pay so for the seven days they'll pay per diem for myself that's great that's very cut and dry black and white so I you know I know what that's going to look like after that I provide them with receipts okay well good laundry I don't have receipts for laundry are they going to pay for my laundry or are they not going to pay my laundry so for some of our younger enlisted families I think it would be really official for a very black and white list to say these are the things that will be covered as far as the inconvenience claim is concerned one of the examples I gave earlier today to someone was vacuuming my floor we've been in our house for a few weeks now and I need to vacuum my carpet so are they going to pay for a vacuum cleaner I don't know so I don't want to go buy a vacuum cleaner because I have a really nice vacuum cleaner but I will buy a cheap vacuum cleaner from Walmart if that's going to cover it so I can head and vacuum my carpet because of sanitary reasons I think it's really just disgusting that I'm taking a broom to my carpet to try to get no anything that I'm going to get there but it's just not a black and white and I don't think that that's fair so inconvenience claim is great but not knowing the specifics is making it a little bit challenging okay Billy that says a lot about you man I'm just questions from an audience Krista if we don't have another Krista thank you so since 2018 I've been on the Army's survivor advisory reworking group and I've had a inside look at just the incredible work that the Army has been doing not obviously since you know since way before I got there and just the pages and pages of accomplishments that the Army has supported and advocated for to support our survivors and I appreciate that very much one of the things that we talk about is education and educating our soldiers and families in the event this does happen in their family and I talk to spouses about the DD 93 and generally our spouses don't know about the DD 93 and and you know personal affairs worksheets and such so are we doing anything to make sure that our soldiers and families are aware that it's important to have those conversations those important and difficult conversations to really set their family up for success because I don't think a lot of families even I don't actually when my husband passed a lot of a lot of his friends a lot of the soldiers didn't realize that we received monthly benefits like survivor benefit pension the dependent indemnity compensation and such so I think that it would really encourage families to have those conversations if they knew they had something really important to talk about hey thank you Chris that's a good question and I work with my battle buddy up on the podium there I have the accountability assistance program as well and we work very closely with this fiber work group as you explained and I looked at it early on and had some gaps of fix so we have done that one professionalizing our category assistance force whether it's military civilian tends to be green suitors at this time and make putting the human in HRC when they work with the families educating them on the updated policies educating them on the benefits that their family needs in walking that family just like their part of your family from very beginning to the end and most importantly staying in touch with you after that process is complete to bring complete closure I'm sure you could probably call somebody today to help you back then and my commitment to you is that to be available for you and yeah when yeah I think we also do we still do ACS classes on army 101 so that we say this is a LES is this is how you access it because it goes even further back before something really bad happens you still have to know these things that happen in the army and these programs are available through the army community services where you can say and you know I still remember my life attending one of those classes and said here's his this is army they're gonna say these acronyms you have no idea what they're saying and there's different levels that's still a program right I just to make sure I get that right yes yeah I mean the other thing too is which you know son major and I've been working on and really with the leadership is you know we talk about this is my squad of building this cohesive teams you have young soldiers and young families and really connect them inside an organization you know like we use an example of the golden triangle you know we every soldier has a family member and whether that leader is they'll who the is every soldier has a buddy that cares about them and they're all kind of connected in a way something's going on and this is what we're trying to do without impeding on people's privacy but how do you start to have that if you're a squad leader and you you want to try to connect the spouse you know or you want to connect the family to that soldier you know when I was 101st we basically ordered people you will call every spot you'll go visit them or at least you'll ask to do that so there was some type of connection made and one way of doing is just taking 93 and the forms out and saying hey hey come on in Joe or Mary let me let me take a look at your forms say wait a minute you know this is who's this so and if you don't have the entities I'm going to just call this number because this is the next of kin call I just want to just make sure we got a good number you know and you can make that call because as you know a lot of times we don't even have the right number we don't even have the right people and as those who involve these things if you don't have the right people the right numbers or you know at our level we see catastrophic instances where it's not very good so the more we can do to tie people to build a state it seems kind of you know kind of I don't know soft whatever but to build that cohesive team where people actually know they're soldiers they know the families and then if something's going wrong you know what's going on you know Joe Amarius having a rough time or whether it's behavioral health issue or it's a domestic issue they feel comfortable actually calling and there's buddies there that care about them and you bring all this thing together so when these things happen you know all the information is there we just got to figure out how do we actually institutionalize that or operationalize that so people actually do those type things because people find out the heart you know you know again at our level Sergeant Major we see you know we got a million people these things you know that we we see all the the worst ones come to our level and we really get out in front like you said so anything on that Sergeant Major? No it just really is and I'm going to tell you the story and you're not going to move it so I did I pulled all the DD form 93s in the office as the Sergeant Major of the Army and the first number I called was incorrect and I was just like really it's like this is my first of all I got a 42 alpha that could fix it like and we did but that's just it it's like we all have to do it you know don't don't don't think for a second that I'm good I did I really thought of course all of mine are going to be right and they're like oh that's the wrong number so so those little things we don't just talk about it we really have to do it I mean it's it's you know we have to know these things exist those are programs that teach our spouses what this looks like you have to know that that exists you have to know your people and then you have to know that there's a program and if you don't know and you just question it you go oh there's no way but I don't know and then but don't give up and say yep we don't we don't do that or we don't have a program and then you might find out we already have one and you just didn't know it but a lot of times we'll go yep I don't know about it so therefore it doesn't exist I'd ask again it's about being a good leader if you feel like something is wrong you know dig in find out is there an army program that already exists and if there isn't there are ways that you can bring these things up and well it's a lot of things come up through the family action program it's alive and well we get to take on those really hard things we look at every six months some of those things have been in there for those like 10 years I think literally but it's legislative so question it if it's not a program or record then get that up to us and if it's you know we can afford to do it we're gonna do it question from an audience we'll take one from Facebook spouse employment question from Graham Floyd from Facebook please fix one problem area for spouses joint bases that code spousal hiring preference jobs to specific service branches for example the spouse of a soldier serving on an air force base is ineligible for spousal hiring preference now chief we can take that I don't think I'm aware of that one we can take that one who I should take that one sorry we can take that one and the G9 is part of the jboss process but that's why we print it you know that's the thing there's someone that knows the answer you know this that they are into it don't be afraid to say you don't know I do not know I have no idea but we but there's someone here that that's either so we got that we um we meet with the other services during the joint management oversight process for joint bases this is a issue we can take to has anyone ever heard of that before jboss process no the no the idea that oh no this this joint base can have joint joint no sorry this is the first that I've heard okay sir military spouse preference is an opium rule so if we have a local civilian hiring office that is prioritizing one spouse over another then it's a local problem we I think we have the proper policy and law in place for military spouses and I think perhaps people aren't following those rules so I would go back to the Facebook gal that wrote that and say you need to march into that civilian human resource office and ask some questions and perhaps provide them the opium rule yeah we might be the help yeah and let us know who you are and then and we can help but that's where the chain of command can help too because sometimes you know our young spouses will march they don't march they they they walk in and they don't even get through the door but if someone of more rank and that you can or walks a serge major comes in with them or someone comes in with them they get in the door and all of a sudden the problems seems to go it happens with me a lot you know I get you know questions and I just go hey take a look at this and the next day it's solved you know so pretty good you know teeth that's shocking all right now the Facebook question no one from the audience okay this one is from Austin Carrick on Facebook a recent report really shows the national capital region is cutting behavior health billets while we are under a national shortage of behavior health providers what is being done to make sure Army families have appropriate access to medical care within the 28 day standard of care I would say I mean again as I said earlier you know one of the challenges we have is that there is a nationwide behavioral health provider shortage and so we are we are trying to work that I personally would like to see us you know work with some of the medical professional associations to try to see what we can do on the front end of that pipeline although I understand there's some complexities with doing that but I think I would ask the surgeon general maybe to see if if you can address the specifics of the NCR region here got a mic yeah we got a mic coming around mic over here for general dean so ma'am madam secretary you're absolutely right there is a shortage in behavior health providers however in the NCR the defense health agency is doing a 703 or an assessment relook of services provided the DHA is not cut in billets the services we own billets but right now we work with the DHA in the NCR providing professionals if a service has cut behavior health providers and remove them from the NCR that's on the service the army is not doing that the chief has given me guidance to make sure that that readiness is first and that we are taking care of our soldiers families and beneficiaries as we do that we are working with the defense health agency who has the control lever on what services are provided in the NCR we'll continue to work with them to make sure that the behavior health care is provided however they are conducting an assessment and what the future looks like will be the DHA call on what's provided okay we've got a little less than five minutes left I think we've got time for one more question anyone in the audience okay now I'll go to this question came from the internet I believe it's a G1 questions about from Christopher Richardson the army substance abuse program is outdated and has not improved since the 1980s there are quicker and more efficient methods today no other American corporation places the entire drug screening on the supervisor in parentheses commander has there been any discussion on how we can help commanders with testing soldiers in the 21st century I'm not aware that we've got that under review but G1 just what sergeant major did say in part of the prevention space that would we will get better at that is under review I acknowledge that the policy is a bit dated but also acknowledge we have some technologies and systems out there that we can improve it upon so I will take that on personally okay I think we're we have culminated we will go to the singulators for their closing remarks madam secretary well I would just like to thank everyone here again as well as everyone in the virtual world on Facebook live and other platforms for joining us it is so helpful for us to hear directly from families about what the concerns are you know whether they're very specific concerns and I hope that there are some very specific concerns in cases here that we're going to be able to follow up on and help with in short order or whether it's exposing some of these you know broader policy issues you know whether it's the fact that perhaps our drug screening you know policies are dated or things that are you know more like going back to the marijuana question about how we have policies at the national level that are changing just really really helpful for us to get this kind of feedback and value the opportunity to hear directly from you so thank you so much for taking the time to be with us I just want to say thanks some great questions and you know every time we do this I learn more and more about our army and I just ask for for our families is if you ever have a problem with something bring it up bring it up through the chain of command get it up to us it could be policy it could be just execution at a certain level but one thing I learned we have a program just about for everything in the army we don't necessarily link up the program with the people we don't have there maybe you know getting it right but there's there's a lot of people that are working hard to take care of families and we want to just make sure we're doing that and when we're not we want to change our procedures we are a bureaucracy we know that and but if we get it to the right leaders you get it to the right expertise we can fix the problem that's what we want to do I'd say like I open to say thank you to all the family members and all that you've done to support your soldier for years and years and years and I promise you there's no way I probably wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for my wife and what she's done to support me and my family and I just can't thank all the families enough so thank you just to admin note the Surgeon General General Dingo will remain here up front for any issues concerns or questions he had me make that announcement they didn't make that for him he loves the job ladies and gentlemen let's give our army seniors a round of applause Holly back to you