The Foreign Service Journal, October 2007

A s the ForeignService becomesmore like themilitary, with a significant percentage of our members doing unac- companied tours of duty inwar zones and other danger- pay posts, it is a lot harder to ignore the stark contrast between the way the State Department treats the families left behind and the support structure institutionalized by the U.S. military. On themilitary side, there are numerous government-fund- ed programs to advocate for families separated by deployments, to subsidize housing and loans, to assist withparenting and child care, to facilitate spousal employment, to cover spouses’ tuition for higher educationand to teachpersonal financialmanagement. There are endless clubs, support groups, commissaries, mental- health professionals, social activities and organizations standing ready to help military families. The military takes seriously the job of caring for families left behind and devotes both staff and extensive budgetary resources to it. On the State Department side, nothing like the above exists to support the families of civilianU.S. government employees serv- ing in those samewar zones. The small staff of the FamilyLiaison Office has done its heroic best —with almost no resources — to try to develop some low-cost outreach activities for families separated by unaccompanied assignments. These include ori- entation sessions held every other month, “no-host” monthly lunches, an information fair held last November, a live Internet/phone seminar onmanaging stress last February, a pre- departure seminar, the creationof a coordinatorposition forunac- companied tours and a Web portal. But it is disheartening to discover that M/FLO receives no department fundswhatsoever to support even these limited infor- mation-sharing activities. EverythingM/FLO has tried to do in support of separated families has been financed through private contributions from the Una Chapman Cox Foundation. Of course, we all understand that it is easier for the military, which ismore than 200 times larger than the Foreign Service, to furnish tangible, concrete support for families through its net- work of subsidized commissaries, schools and residential bases, infrastructure that State does not have. We all understand that the Pentagon’s vast budget can afford far greater resources for actual assistance to families. But seriously … no new State Department money allocated to M/FLO in recent years for the hundreds of separated Foreign Service families? There is one relatively straightforwardway for the department toaddress this glaringproblem: by substantially increasingor even doubling the SeparateMaintenanceAllowance. The SMA is the onlymaterial support that FS families getwhen the employee goes off to IraqorAfghanistan. We atAFSAbelieve—andhaveheard constantly from members serving at unaccompanied posts — that the SMA is insultingly inadequate. At the current rate, an employee serv- ing inawar zone canget about $850per month to maintain a spouse at a sepa- rate location, or just over $1,200 per month tomaintain a spouse and a cou- ple of kids. These amounts are little more than a token contribution to the actual expenses that anunaccompanied employee incurs in maintaining his/her family back home. For example, in the area of lodging expenses in the Washingtonmetropolitanarea, the current SMArealistically cov- ers barelyhalf of the average rental costs for unfurnisheddwellings alone. This is to say nothing of all the other expenses of food, utilities, transportation, clothing, activities, long-distance phone calls to the missing spouse/parent, etc. The State Department will say that the SMA exists only to help “defray” the costs ofmaintaining families thousands ofmiles away, but the current SMA rates are insufficient tomake amean- ingful difference. Although Foreign Service members do get a hardship differential and danger pay during these most diffi- cult assignments, they are forced to spend these extra monies —and often to go out-of-pocket — tomaintain their families elsewhere. Meanwhile, the department benefits financially from send- ing employees alone onunaccompanied postings. Lower hous- ing costs at post, lower utility costs, lower transportation costs, no family overseas health care costs, and complete elimination of schooling costs all combine to provide substantial savings to the department. These savings, we believe, far exceed the amount that the department pays out in SMA. Moreover, at a time whenwe are struggling to fill more than 800 unaccompanied positions overseas every year, dramatically increasing the SeparateMaintenanceAllowance tobring itmore in linewith realitywouldprovide apowerful incentive to employ- ees to volunteer for such postings. AFSA has repeatedly raised with the department our urgent proposal to increase SMA, starting with a formal letter in November 2005. We havementioned it to the Secretary of State at everymeeting since then, andwehighlighted it inAFSA’s “wish list” for the new director general in summer 2006. Nearly two years have passed, but the SMA remains at the same paltry level. Until thedepartment demonstrates awillingness todevoteactu- al resources to the support of the growing number of Foreign Service families separated by war-zone and other unaccompa- nied postings, the words of senior officials about family-friend- liness will ring hollow. V.P. VOICE: STATE BY STEVE KASHKETT Support for Separated Families OC T OB E R 2 0 0 7 / F OR E I GN S E R V I C E J OU R N A L 63 A F S A N E W S