Stryker Brigade News

The extra funding from the Installation Management Agency will be used to:

• Repair and upgrade the Family Assistance Centers at forts Wainwright and Richardson;

• Extend the privately-owned vehicle and household goods storage contracts for deployed Soldiers;

• Provide funding for critical civilian and contractor hires to assist the installations in supporting affected family members;

• Fund Child and Youth Services activities;

• Fund the conversion of the Last Frontier Community Center at Fort Wainwright to a Community Activity Center;

• Fund repairs to the School Age Services building at Fort Wainwright; and

• Provide for civilian overtime pay for positions necessary to provide support for the Soldiers and their families.

In other efforts to help families of the 172nd, the mental health clinic at Bassett Army Community Hospital has transitioned to an open-access clinic, where the Army Surgeon General’s office has sent two child psychologists to train teachers and school counselors delivering mental-health services to school children.

Michele Barber, the Fort Richardson Family Assistance Center coordinator, said her staff has received 146 visitors and nearly 200 hundred phone calls by family members looking for support and information.

More than 650 phone calls have been received by the Fort Wainwright FAC staff, and they have assisted a little more than 100 visitors.

“Initially families needed counseling and emotional support to address coping with the news of the extension and talking to the kids,” Barber said. “As time progresses families are dealing with more pragmatic issues.

“Besides the many vacation plans that were interrupted, many Soldiers had plans to move on to their next mission. Some spouses were already in the process of PCSing to their next duty location, others are in housing that is scheduled to be remodeled so they need to move,” she explained.

“Some Soldiers had been on a tight timetable to go to a special training or position, which is being missed. Each of those issues is being worked individually. Other issues include expiring powers of attorney, huge telephone bills and needing additional child care.”

Karen Conrad, the USAG-AK FAC coordinator, said support will be tailored for differing circumstances.

“Every family has their own unique circumstances resulting from this extension,” Conrad said. “Each case will be handled professionally, carefully and as quickly as possible. We will work to appropriately address everyone’s problem, no matter how big or how small.”

Barber said there are still many things the civilian and military community can do for the affected families.

“Refer families affected by the deployment extension to the FAC,” she suggested. “The FAC was set up specifically to be a convenient place for families affected by the deployment extension to get support.

“When an issue involves multiple agencies, those who go through the FAC are escorted to each agency and provided immediate assistance,” she explained. “We also follow up on each FAC case to make sure the issues are addressed. When issues are not resolvable at the local level, we take those issues through our chain of command and the DA Tiger Team to get assistance to resolve the issue.”

The Tiger Team, a Department of the Army-led group of experts from various support channels, is taking issues that cannot be resolved locally to the level necessary to fix the problem, Barber said. One of the Tiger Team initiatives was to have AKO automatically extend all sponsored accounts of deployed 172nd Soldiers for 180 days.

She pointed to a recent Tiger Team success when a family member was initially turned down for a full refund of unused airline tickets.

The family’s tickets cost $2,400 and the airline agreed to refund only $700.

The issue went up the Tiger Team chain and a full refund followed soon after.

“That was reversed due to the influence of the DA Tiger Team,” Barber said. “They are working with the individual airlines and cruise lines to obtain full refunds for everyone whose travel plans were impacted by the deployment extension.”

Locally, Barber said people can “volunteer to do the things that we struggle to find volunteers for,” such as mowing lawns, shoveling snow, helping with household and car maintenance issues, and providing transportation for those who can’t drive.