Braxton Taylor
The Marine Corps announced “significant updates and additions” to its child care program in an administrative message last week that clarifies training requirements for staff, outlines the program’s responsibilities for children with disabilities, and delineates the process for reporting serious incidents such as suspected child abuse, among others.
The Marine Corps’ Child and Youth Program is intended to provide “high-quality and affordable” child care to support families with children between 6 weeks and 18 years old, according to the update. Military parents often rely on these services to take care of their children amid busy schedules, deployments and frequent moves.
While the announcement of the changes came last week, the order is dated December 2024 and outlines procedures for quality-assurance inspections of service facilities and practices, as well as the establishment of written policies as they relate to child abuse prevention, accreditation and overall safety procedures, for example.
Read Next: Ranger School Is Getting a New Fitness Assessment
Maj. Jacoby Getty, a spokesperson for the service’s Manpower and Reserve Affairs, told Military.com that some of the points listed in the updated policy are not necessarily “new to the fleet,” such as the assignment of leader responsibilities for overseeing the program or periodic family feedback, but that it clarified policies as they relate to staff training or incident reporting, for example, as part of a regular service review of policy.
Getty said that Marine Corps orders are reviewed and revised every six years after their publication “to provide affordable, quality child and youth care in a safe, healthy and nurturing environment.”
One notable part of the update was the description of the Marine Corps SharePoint Serious Incident Report feature, which replaced the service’s old reporting function called Gear Locker “several years ago,” Getty said.
According to the updated policy, the SharePoint is meant to document, track and store instances of serious medical incidents, “suspected institutional child abuse/neglect,” unattended child issues, and “problematic sexual behavior in children and youth” reporting.
In April 2024, Military.com published an investigation into the military’s Child Development Centers, which fall under the umbrella of service child care programs and provide care for children up to five years old. The investigation found CDCs lacked safeguards to ensure alleged abuse is reported and prevented parents from accessing information about incidents. The report generated an immediate investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general.
The publication also reported that in December 2024 — the date on the recent Marine Corps policy update — that five Marine families had filed federal claims against the government alleging that a day care at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Arizona, engaged in negligent hiring practices, training and supervision that led to child abuse and neglect.
A spokesperson for the base told Military.com at the time that the service was aware of the legal action and was working with authorities amid their investigation.
When asked whether the SharePoint addresses the concerns alleged by the Yuma families and if they can use it to monitor progress on the reports, Yvonne Carlock, another spokesperson for the Manpower and Reserve Affairs division, said that “the SIRs are for internal Marine Corps reporting, it isn’t an open site for families or the public. The installation provides updates to the families regarding their specific situation.”
One struggle that parents of children who were allegedly abused outlined in Military.com’s investigation of CDCs last year revolved around having to request information — including video of abuse — through Freedom of Information Act requests. One family Military.com spoke to last year said that they were told to pay $200 per editing hour for the videos, costing them roughly $15,000 total to view footage of their daughter being abused.
According to the Marine Corps update from last week, parents looking to obtain a copy of videos at the service’s Child and Youth Program, or CYP, sites must go through the FOIA process, though it was unclear whether or what costs may be associated. Closed-circuit television, or CCTV, is meant to provide parents a means to observe their children and staff and “deters child abuse and neglect,” the update said.
“CYP must not make release determinations nor respond directly to a parent requesting to either view, or obtain a copy of, a CCTV video recording except to direct the parent to the installation FOIA coordinator,” according to the update.
However, the update also said that, “in the spirit of providing ‘unrestricted access’ to children where CCTV is available, parents must be allowed to view their children in real time interacting with other children” and staff “by viewing their children through CCTV monitors on the premises.”
Those videos must be maintained for a minimum of 90 days, though “should management become aware of a claim against the government; foresee litigation as a direct result of events occurring at the CYP facility that may have been recorded by the CCTV system; or required retention of a recording pending investigation into allegations of misconduct depicted in the video, the responsive permanent recording must not be destroyed until released for destruction by” legal counsel.
The Marine Corps update of its child care program also references several supporting Navy documents that outline background check protocols for employees charged with caring for service members’ children at the facilities, though the recent document was implemented under “a Marine Corps initiative,” Getty said.
The program also “must embrace inclusion as an attitude and philosophy that welcomes and supports the participation of children with and without disabilities and supports reasonable accommodations,” according to the update, adding that “no child who meets basic age and eligibility requirements must, solely based on disability or identified needs, be excluded from participation in” the program.
On Monday, Military.com reported that Hill Air Force Base, Utah, the service’s second-largest base by population and size, would be shuttering one of its two day care centers amid hiring freezes ordered by President Donald Trump’s administration.
“CDCs traditionally face high turnover, and several recent departures in conjunction with the hiring freeze have reduced the number of supervisors and trainers available,” said Kendahl Johnson, a Hill Air Force Base spokesperson. “Maintaining two open CDCs at current personnel levels would pose an unacceptable risk to the 200 children who remain in care at Hill AFB.”
Thirty-one families were first notified March 12 that they would be disenrolled from one of the bases’s facilities, nearly a week before the Department of Defense issued a memo that it would exempt certain positions from the hiring freeze, including “child and youth programs staff” and instructors at DoD schools or child care centers.
For the Marine Corps, Getty said the service has resumed hiring in support of the child care program following the initial freeze and that it was “not aware of any families being disenrolled or any personnel being released from the program. Additionally, no CYP centers were shut down.”
“Our commitment remains steadfast in providing consistent, high-quality child care and youth services to support our Marines and their families,” he added.
Related: Marine Corps Day Care Hit with Legal Allegations of Widespread Child Abuse
Story Continues
Read the full article here