Improved Screening Needed for Military Families Being Transferred to Europe

GAO surveyed Army and Air Force practices in screening the dependents of active duty personnel assigned overseas, to identify special educational and medical problems that cannot be adequately handled overseas.

Army and Air Force regulations are similar, but Army screening practices are less effective, resulting in the transfer of numbers of Army dependents to overseas locations without the resources to provide the necessary medical and educational attention. This overtaxes existing medical and educational facilities and proportionately reduces the services available to all. Specialized medical facilities at the surveyed hospitals in West Germany fall short of the demands upon them, particularly in speech pathology, neurology, psychiatry, and orthopedics. Department of Defense Dependent Schools, Europe (DODDSEUR) cannot treat all the children with emotional or psychological problems, about 1,100, or 1 percent, of the total enrolled. Neither the Army nor the Air Force applies its screening procedures to all families requesting overseas travel, but the Air Force procedures evaluate the medical and educational problems of dependent children and determine the adequacy of facilities in Europe to deal with them. The large number of Army dependents with serious problems permitted to go to Europe has added to the burden of providing specialized care, and placed hardships on families having these problems.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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