Outgoing DOD family official: ‘Don’t forget who you’re working for’

Patricia Montes Barron has advice for her successor at the Defense Department: “Whatever you do, even if you have to get a little photo and put it on your desk, don’t forget who you’re working for.

“It’s those families that count on us to not only do well by them, but to listen to them and change course when we need to.”

When Barron came on board as head of DOD’s military community and family policy four years ago, she pledged to bring more military family voices to DOD. That included her own voice, as an Army wife who moved with her now-retired husband 14 times in 30 years. And she incorporated those voices in many ways, from hiring more active-duty spouses to work on the team, to taking action on concerns and questions raised by families.

An example of her persistence on that front is her focus on one issue raised by an Army wife in early 2021, shortly after Barron was sworn in to her new position. Barron was still working to get that issue resolved when she left the administration earlier this month, she told Military Times in an interview shortly before leaving.

Positive change ‘takes time’

In commentary published in Military Times in 2021, that Army wife, Frances Tilney Burke, made a seemingly simple request: Find a way for military parents to register their child for child care electronically when moving from one installation to another.

While DOD’s MilitaryChildCare.com site allows families to get on child care waitlists before they move, the challenge is that parents still must physically

go into the child development center to fill out the registration paperwork. That was an example of a larger issue, Burke wrote.

“Will the new [deputy assistant secretary] recognize such eternally frustrating military family roadblocks and seek change, or will she stay complacent … And languish within an already recalcitrant system?” she wrote.

Like all feedback from military families Barron has received, “I took it to heart. We’re listening,” she said.

But, as she has learned, “It’s very complicated to get things done in the Pentagon. I didn’t know that when I first got here.”

Electronic registration might have seemed like a simple request, but defense officials must deal with multiple information technology platforms that don’t necessarily talk to each other.

“Each of the services has their own, and it’s just not easy. You almost have to create this whole new platform so that it can go from one place to another,” Barron explained. “That’s one of the things they’ve been trying to get after … modernizing the way that we talk to each other electronically.

“But it takes time,” she added.

While Barron didn’t see that solution become reality during her tenure, “I will see it sometime in the near future,” she said. “Even though it might have taken us four-plus years to get there, we are absolutely close to getting there.”

That’s just one of many issues Barron and her team have worked on over the last four years. The military community and family policy team oversees the policies and programs for military families from cradle to grave — to include child care; spouse employment programs; commissaries and exchanges; morale, welfare and recreation programs, such as sports, leisure and cultural activities; family violence prevention and response; exceptional family member programs; non-medical counseling; casualty assistance and mortuary affairs; and a host of other responsibilities.

Barron said she was amazed at the amount of passion and commitment the team has to the mission and the work, and she believes every person on her team was able to move the needle on their specific issue.

“When you have the kind of support from the very top, as in the secretary of defense focusing on people and taking care of our people, there’s an awful lot we can do that maybe before didn’t seem possible,” Barron said.

Progress for military parents, spouses

With the help Congress, former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s “taking care of people” focus and the spotlight of former First Lady Jill Biden’s Joining Forces initiative, Barron and her team have drilled down into some solutions that can make a difference in a number of areas.

If there’s one thing Barron hopes continues into future administrations, she said, it’s a strong focus on people.

A couple of the biggest accomplishments involving child care and spouse employment under Barron’s leadership included:

• Chipping away at child care shortages, which were exacerbated because of the pandemic. As a result of a variety of efforts, the overall waitlists for child development centers have been reduced by 55%, Barron said.

Her office increased pay and other incentives to recruit and retain child care employees and restructure positions to provide more opportunities for advancement.

They’ve also helped double the number of military parents who are able to get their child care fees reduced with qualified providers in their civilian communities. Officials did so by discovering that about 20% more civilian child care providers had met the standards for military child care fee assistance subsidies as a result of some states increasing their standards for their child care workforce.

• Growing employment opportunities for military spouses. The spouse unemployment rate, based on DOD surveys of spouses, has held steady for a while at around 20% to 21%. But Barron noted that over the past decade, it has moved from 25% down to 20%. “It’s not great, but we are making incremental movement,” she said.

The office increased the number of military spouses eligible for the $4,000 scholarships in the My Career Advancement Account program, known as MyCAA. The scholarships allow spouses to pursue a license, certification or associate degree, or pay for testing for college credit and continuing education units. Eligibility was opened to spouses of service members in the ranks of E-7, E-8, E-9,and W-3. Previously, the program was open to spouses of E-1 to E-6, W-1 and W-2, and O-1 to O-3.

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Barron’s favorite initiative overall, she said, is the Military Spouse Career Accelerator Pilot, which began in 2023 and through which 900 spouses to date have been placed in 12-week fellowships with private employers. DOD pays each spouse’s salary during the fellowship, with the understanding there may be a job offer at the end. Over 80% of the spouse fellows get permanent job offers, Barron said, adding that the initial idea required some “really hard” thinking on the part of her staff.

At the end of January, another 200 employers are expected to join the Military Spouse Employment Partnership, adding to the more than 850 employers who have committed to hiring military spouses and are vetted by DOD officials. Barron’s office has been shoring up their systems to hold these employers accountable, she said, which includes checking in with them quarterly to evaluate whether they are actively looking for, hiring and retaining spouses. Barron encourages military spouses to make sure they complete their profile in the MSEP portal so that employers will reach out.

‘It wasn’t easy’

Barron has worked closely with other offices in the Pentagon on people-centered issues, too, and hopes that type of collaboration will continue.

“I will tell you that it wasn’t easy to come into a building like the Pentagon … to be a part of the Department of Defense that is so incredibly complicated, and learn what I needed to learn, and hold my own, and advocate and fight for the things that we felt were important,” she said.

Family advocates who spoke about Barron to Military Times praised her for her work.

“I’m grateful she always kept families first. She never lost sight of families, and I can imagine how difficult the day-to-day can be,” said Shannon Razsadin, CEO of Military Family Advisory Network. “She always kept families as her north star. She has in every part of her life.”

Barron had years of experience as an advocate in nonprofits for military families long before working at the Pentagon. Her resume includes serving as the head of the family readiness directorate at the Association of the United States Army, working as director of outreach for military family projects at Zero to Three and directing youth initiatives at the National Military Family Association, where she oversaw NMFA’s Operation Purple Camp program.

“I think the biggest reason why I was successful, besides the fact that there was an incredible team that was doing all the hard work, is that I was also connected to the military spouses who were currently serving, and those that had served, because of the work that I had done before,” Barron said. “I made it a point to make sure we didn’t lose that connection, that we always reached out to say, ‘How are we doing? Did we get that right? What do you think?’”

If Barron had another year in the job, she would prioritize improving the office’s use of data and limiting bureaucratic red tape, she said.

Though she’s out of time in her post, Barron described it as “the number one experience” of her life.

“This has filled my heart like you have no idea,” Barron said. “I’m just a normal, regular military spouse. I followed my soldier for 30 years, got into the advocacy [work]. I never thought I’d be sitting in this seat – and yet, here I am. I encourage other military spouses to follow suit.”