New military spouse commission touts policy changes in inaugural meeting

A presidential commission for military spouses held its first meeting Monday and announced policy changes it has already influenced concerning medical appointments and child care access.

Jennifer Hegseth, wife of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, chairs the commission and said that even though many of the problems the commission plans to address are longstanding, “many of those solutions will be new.”

“Some already exist and have gotten stuck in the bureaucracy — and we’ll find those, too,” she said.

Established Aug. 3, the Military Spouse Commission is made up of the spouses of service secretaries, members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and each service’s senior enlisted leader. The spouse of the homeland security secretary is also included because the Coast Guard falls within that department.

Soon after its establishment, the commission requested feedback and received thousands of messages. Roughly 40% of the feedback identified challenges with education and access to child care. Most of the remaining feedback was split between deployment support services, housing and health care.

“Behind every number is a spouse describing how these challenges affect daily life, financial security and military readiness,” said Desiree Thompson Sayle, the commission’s executive director.

Hegseth said she learned through feedback that spouses are sometimes barred from attending each other’s medical appointments or from visiting the service member spouse in a military treatment facility. The commission contacted the Defense Health Agency and got changes made to its visitation policy.

It now requires “facilities to accommodate patient requests for the presence of a spouse or other attendant during a medical appointment consistent with the patient’s preferences, privacy requirements and clinical operations,” Hegseth said. “We’re not quite sure how it got to a point where they weren’t being allowed even though the service member wanted them there.”

The commission also announced a new child care pilot program to allow faith-based, license-exempt day cares to participate in the military’s fee-assistance program, also referred to as Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood. The program aims to offset the cost of child care in local communities by providing families fee-assistance options.

The new pilot is available in three Virginia cities — Arlington, Norfolk and Virginia Beach — as well as Naval Base Kitsap, Wash., and Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego. Additional information about the pilot was not immediately available.

The commission will meet monthly at the White House and said it is working on a “state of the spouse” report to release in November.