After much deliberation, and constant lobbying from 7th Special Forces Group families, the unit will finally have a child day care center built at Camp Bull Simmons on Eglin Air Force base, the secretary of the Army announced at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) event this week.
Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth also announced that they are working on hiring more employees for child day care on military installations. Military parents have complained in the past that the wait lists to get their children into daycare are years long, and usually the service member is being moved to another base long before their child is admitted.
7th Special Forces Group soldiers had to deal with these long wait times as well as the issue that the base daycare center was on the opposite side of the installation.
Families would have to spend 3-4 hours a day on the road just to take their kids to daycare, and options were also very limited off-post. Building a new daycare center right next to 7th Group significantly simplifies everything for the families.
"Serving parents who serve in the Army is crucial to the retention and readiness of our force," Wormuth stated.
Part of the long lead-up to the announcement of finally building the daycare center was due to red tape between the Army and Air Force, multiple sources told Connecting Vets.
"Many of these, these family members work, they're especially talented, and they have careers," retired Special Forces General Fran Beaudette told Connecting Vets in May.
"When you couple that with husband and wife are deployed frequently, you know, that puts tremendous challenges and stresses on families and a lot of deployments, particularly in the history of the 7th Group recently, with its long-term commitment to Afghanistan as an example, these were tough and demanding deployments."
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