Providing Child Care to Military Families

The Department of Defense (DoD) recognizes that high-quality child care for military families impacts both readiness and retention. DoD was concerned, however, that the child-care demand formula it uses may not be addressing all relevant aspects of child-care need. As such, the Office of the Secretary of Defense asked the RAND Corporation to assess the DoD formula as a tool for translating information on military families into measures of potential child-care need and to suggest ways that the tool might be improved. To perform this assessment, RAND conducted 21 focus groups on eight installations and from them developed a survey to determine parental preferences and other factors that might affect child-care need. In light of the survey results, the authors assess the validity of the DoD formula in meeting the child-care needs of military families, analyze the factors that influence key child-care outcomes, and address the broader issue of how DoD can refine its goals for military child care.