Military Families Need the Process Before the Announcement

Since 2024, OCCP has asked defense officials to let military families use fee assistance at license-exempt child care programs, including the religiously exempt centers many states already recognize. We filed a formal comment in 2025, and the department listed it as already addressed. We began hearing leadership discuss opening fee assistance to these programs this spring, and this fall the plan went public without any notice that families cannot use it yet.

At the Military Spouse Commission's first meeting on September 21, a faith-based, license-exempt pilot was announced for five locations. Stars and Stripes reported it as available in Arlington, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Naval Base Kitsap and Naval Base Point Loma. Eight days later, the Pentagon office responsible for the program told OCCP in writing that the pilot was not live, was still pre-decisional, and that those locations did not come from its information. Two of the five sites are in states with no religious-exemption category in their licensing law.

On October 13, at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual meeting, the department's assistant secretary for manpower and reserve affairs said he was signing every waiver request that reached his desk for a qualified faith-based center. When Stars and Stripes followed up on October 21, the Pentagon gave no details on those waivers, and neither the Pentagon nor the White House confirmed the pilot was running.

Two families OCCP works with took that statement at its word. Each submitted a waiver request for the faith-based center their child already attends. Both received the same reply, pointing them to contacts they had already tried. One was told in writing by their service's child and youth programs office that no individual waiver path runs through that office. As of this writing, neither family has a decision, a timeline, or the name of the office that will decide.

We have seen this before.

Child Care in Your Home began in July 2021 as the In-Home Child Care Fee Assistance Pilot, offered in five regions. Families were told how to request it. The number of spaces came out later: 250 across all five regions. By February 2022, 2,174 families had asked for it and five were receiving assistance. In its second year, the program was expected to serve about 40 families. Most families learned how limited it was by applying and waiting.

The PCS child care reimbursement pilot followed the same order. Congress created it in December 2022, and by January 2023 families were reading that they could be reimbursed. They were not given guidance on how until October 1, 2024. The pilot pays only for the commercial travel of a caregiver the family brings to a new duty station, and only after the family requests care at the child development center there and learns no space will open within 30 days. Families still tell us their travel offices cannot promise the cost will be reimbursed. The program's own page now says a spouse must be working, looking for work, or in school, a condition the law does not include. A report to Congress on the pilot is due January 1, 2027.

In each case, the announcement reached families before the process did. Families make real decisions on what officials say. They keep a provider, turn down another spot, pay full price while they wait, or fly a caregiver across the country. When the actual rules arrive months later and look different from the announcement, the family has already paid.

Both earlier pilots also worked best for families who were already managing. CCYH asks a family to find, hire, and employ a caregiver and to cover whatever fee assistance leaves. The PCS pilot pays travel for a caregiver the family already has, either someone who can drop everything and help for free or a nanny they are already paying. Families without those resources gained little from either. The license-exempt pilot is different. Making more local programs eligible for fee assistance adds care a family can actually enroll in, and that is why it matters that this one be done right.

The department can fix this without slowing anything down. A program is available when a family can read the eligibility criteria, submit a request, and get a decision from a named office within a stated time. Until all of that exists in writing, officials should describe a program as planned.

For the faith-based pilot, that means publishing the waiver criteria and the office that decides, giving families a response time, and correcting the record on the locations announced in September. When the pilot launches, eligibility should follow the license-exempt categories states already define. Most states have no faith-based category, which leaves nothing to check a provider's claim against.

OCCP wants this expansion to work. The families already relying on these centers need it to be real before the next announcement.