Young families are looking for an ideal balance between advancing their careers and spending time with their families. The same is true of Bundeswehr personnel. Against this backdrop, the Bundeswehr is working to improve the compatibility of family and work requirements.
Reliable child care
The availability of comprehensive child care is essential to the compatibility of family life and service in the Bundeswehr, which is why it is also one of the objectives of the “Bundeswehr in the lead” attractiveness campaign. For example, the Bundeswehr now has its own day-care centre, along with three day-care facilities affiliated with the Bundeswehr. To ensure that adequate child care is available to meet requirements throughout the Bundeswehr’s locations, the Bundeswehr also reserves places in suitable municipal and private day-care centres. Whenever possible, the hours of child care are coordinated with the parents’ working hours.
Information from a single source
Bundeswehr personnel receive active support for child care at the various locations if the available child care infrastructure is not adequate to meet their requirements. The Bundeswehr’s Child Care Portal also provides information about existing offers, local points of contact, and legal regulations related to parental leave and maternity protection. Downloadable forms, as well as chats and forums, round out the information offered.
Active support outside of Germany
The Bundeswehr also aims to take suitable measures to improve child care at the Bundeswehr garrisons outside of Germany where personnel require child care – for example by establishing a day care or reserving places in existing child care facilities.
Taking children to the office
More than 340 parent-child offices have been set up on Bundeswehr sites, and more are in planning. This offer is available to all Bundeswehr personnel in specific and temporary emergency situations. It takes pressure off of parents when their regular child care is temporarily unavailable and no other solution is available in time. These offices are another element in improving the compatibility of family life and service in the Bundeswehr.
Superiors are held accountable
However, all of these options can only truly help if superiors do their part. For that reason, the Bundeswehr holds them particularly accountable: in the words of the current Manual on the Compatibility of Family Life and Service in the Armed Forces (Handbuch zur Vereinbarkeit von Familie und Dienst in den Streitkräften), “The employer and all superiors are […] obliged to consider the family and relationship needs of military personnel when implementing the requirements of duty”.
Support during deployments abroad
Through its nationwide family support organisation, the Bundeswehr helps to relieve the considerable strains to which families are subjected when military personnel are deployed outside Germany. With 31 family assistance centres and up to 50 temporary deployment-related family support points, this organisation offers soldiers and their families help and advice. While the family assistance centres also ensure support during routine duty, the family support points only handle deployment-related support tasks. Family members can contact family support day and night for the entire duration of a deployment through the freephone connection.
Support through information management
The family support organisation cooperates closely with Bundeswehr organisations and civilian authorities that provide social services, as well as the Bundeswehr Assistance Network (Netzwerk der Hilfe). In addition, the family support organisation holds regular information meetings on site to inform family members of the situation in the mission areas. These events are also important platforms for the various family members to come into contact with each other.