PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Naval Education and Training Command (NETC) hosted
members from the Navy Region Southeast Fleet and Family Readiness program and Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola Fleet and Family Support Center (FFSC) Feb. 10 to discuss programs that are available to Sailors and their families.
The informational brief provided Rear Adm. Pete Garvin, NETC commander, and NETC senior staff members with an overview of the array of resources and programs aimed at the prevention of destructive behaviors.
“Our goal at FFSC is to empower service members by providing information and teaching skills to enable them to succeed in life,” said Kathleen Doherty, NAS Pensacola FFSC Director. “We have programs for everyone, with a committed staff that sees it as their honor to support and assist service members and their families. Today’s focus on spreading the word about what destructive behaviors are and what we can do to address them is one facet of our wide-ranging assistance.”
Doherty shared insights on NAS Pensacola statistics and trends and prevention efforts to reduce the likelihood and prevalence of destructive behaviors. For NETC, NAS Pensacola serves as home for schools for information warfare and aviation-related ratings for a large number of new accession enlisted Sailors, as well as for officers who begin naval aviation training.
“Not only here in Pensacola but throughout all 251 NETC training sites around the world, roughly 37,000 Sailors are learning at NETC schools on any given day, so I think it is immensely beneficial for the headquarters’ leaders to stay up-to-date with what the Fleet and Family Support Program can do for our students,” said Garvin. “As leaders, we are entrusted with the well-being of our nation’s sons and daughters who have volunteered to selflessly serve their country. Understanding and helping to tackle destructive behaviors is an important part of what we do every day.”
Doherty described how the Family Advocacy Program (FAP) provides clinical assessment, treatment and services for service members, their partners and family members involved in allegations of domestic abuse and child abuse. FAP’s goal is to prevent domestic violence by encouraging people to examine their own behavior and take steps to learn and practice healthier behaviors.
“We focus prevention efforts on awareness and outreach through printed information around the base and through social media,” said Doherty. “We also offer a new parent support home visitor program, classes on healthy relationships, and conflict management and anger management classes.”
Another destructive behavior that FFSC helps with is suicide prevention. FFSC refers Sailors to behavioral health professionals and operates the Sailor Assistance and Intercept for Life (SAIL) program. Available to active-duty Sailors who experienced a suicide ideation or attempt, SAIL is an evidence-based intervention that provides rapid assistance, ongoing risk assessment, care coordination, and reintegration assistance.
With the SAPR program, FFSC provides outreach activities throughout the year, awareness information via printed and posted around the base, and an ongoing social media marketing campaign. The FFSC SAPR staff also trains and sustains uniformed victim advocates to be direct service providers.
“We’re always looking for new and better ways to approach sexual assault prevention, awareness, and response,” said Tina Vaughn-Wardle, Navy Region Southeast Regional Sexual Assault Response Coordinator. “We are really motivated about one of our newest initiatives called the Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA) program, which was originally created for women in their first year of college. We are working on an EAAA pilot with one of the schoolhouses in Pensacola to deliver a course for young women, aged 17-24, that is shown to reduce the incidence of sexual assault.”
FFSCs support individual and family readiness through a full array of programs and resources which help Navy families to be resilient, well-informed and adaptable to the Navy environment. These programs and services are currently delivered from 81 sites worldwide, with 58 of those sites delivering a full portfolio of programs and services.
NETC’s mission is to recruit and hire talented civilians, deliver training and education to transform civilians into Sailors and distribute accession Sailors to the fleet to maximize readiness and ensure mission success; to provide specialized training and educational tools to advance the personal and professional development of Sailors throughout their career; and serve as sole claimant for individual training and education and as the principal advisor to the chief of naval operations and commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command on training and education related matters.
For more information about the Fleet and Family Support Program, visit
https://www.cnic.navy.mil/ffr/family_readiness/fleet_and_family_support_program.html
For more information about NETC, visit the command’s website at
https://www.netc.navy.mil/ and follow MyNavy HR: