Behind Closed Doors: The 2023 DoD Child Care Summit That Families Couldn't Attend

Operation Child Care Project™
6 days ago
4 min read

Analysis of the September 15, 2023 Pentagon event that was advertised as a comprehensive stakeholder engagement, but excluded the family voices most pivotal to the conversation

When Department of Defense personnel announced its upcoming Child Care Summit via now-deleted social media channels in 2023, military families facing child care crises had reason for hope. The event was widely promoted as a comprehensive approach to gather "input from service members and their spouses, child development experts and early childhood educators," with Pentagon leaders committed to "generating discussions and gathering ideas for how to improve the Defense Department's child care programs."

For OCC Project, an organization dedicated to using family input to improve military programs, this summit represented exactly the kind of stakeholder engagement that drives meaningful reform. We closely tracked the announcements, waiting for details on how families experiencing these struggles firsthand could participate and share their experiences.

Despite official descriptions of the summit as designed to "facilitate discussions and capture a broad range of perspectives," no mechanism for public registration or family participation was ever announced. When OCC Project inquired about attendance opportunities for families and civilian stakeholders through the aforementioned social media posts, we were told information on how to request attendance would be "announced soon”. Albeit nothing came until the September 15, 2023, post-event press releases, which were the only notification families received.

Analysis of available documentation reveals that the September 15, 2023, event functioned differently than suggested. The known attendees, identified through press releases and official coverage, included:

The Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (delivered opening remarks)
The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Military Community and Family Policy (summit organizer)
The Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower and Reserve Affairs
The Executive Director of the Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska
The CEO of Child Care Aware of America
DoD media personnel and other invited officials

While press releases mentioned "service members and their spouses" as participants, no specific military families were identified, and the absence of any public registration process suggests attendance was limited to direct invitations from the Pentagon.

This structure is relevant because the summit has consistently been positioned as the foundation for subsequent policy reforms and program expansions. OCC Project has identified two significant developments that developed after the summit.

The first significant development following the summit was the awarding of a major contract to the Armed Services YMCA (ASYMCA) in March 2024, just six months after the event, as part of DoD's new Child Care Expansion Initiative.

The contract, whose exact value remains undisclosed despite public information requests, funded the construction of new child care centers exclusively serving DoD families. The first facility opened in Norfolk, with startup costs of $6.6 million, serving approximately 216 children, and estimated annual operating expenses of $6-$8 million per location.

A notable detail regarding personnel transitions: the Pentagon official who delivered opening remarks at the 2023 Child Care Summit as Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness had previously served as ASYMCA's Chief Development Officer until 2019. This individual departed government service in January 2025 and returned to ASYMCA as Chief Operating Officer three months later—one month before the first ASYMCA center opened under the DoD contract. This pattern of personnel movement between DoD and contracted organizations illustrates how military child care policy development often involves a relatively small circle of stakeholders with overlapping professional relationships.

OCC Project's attempts to locate the competitive solicitation for this contract have been unsuccessful.

The second significant development was the establishment of a new internal working group within the DoD. According to documentation obtained through an OCC Project FOIA request, a working group was formed following the summit, bringing together Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood (MCCYN) leadership from each service branch and DoD headquarters staff. This collaborative group was charged with a critical mission: determining how to shorten wait times for families and improve consistency based on participant input gathered at the summit.

OCC Project will release the "Business Rule Guidance: Family Eligibility and Provider Requirements" document, also obtained through a FOIA request, later this week. This guidance represents the concrete policy framework that emerged from the working group's deliberations, with the DoD describing these business rules as "the framework moving forward" for implementing military child care policy. The memo establishes a March 31, 2026, implementation deadline for the Military Services.

As we approach this deadline, OCC Project has been monitoring for communications to families and providers about these forthcoming changes. Through our work with state and local advocacy partners, we have not yet identified any outreach or guidance materials to inform families and providers about these new business rules. Given the significant changes outlined in the guidance, transparency about implementation timelines and what families can expect will be essential for ensuring these reforms achieve their intended impact.

In examining significant DoD child care changes that have occurred since the Child Care Summit, most were in operation before the convening:

Child care fee structure reforms were announced in April 2023, five months before the summit
PCS child care travel reimbursement pilots were mandated by Congress in the FY 2023 NDAA (December 2022)
Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account expansion was directed by Secretary of Defense memorandum in March 2023
Child Care in Your Home pilot expansions were announced in July 2023, two months before the summit

This timeline and public records suggest that the Child Care Summit's significant outcomes are limited to the two developments mentioned above.

The one-time 2023 Child Care Summit offered an opportunity to examine how military family policy development processes work in practice. The event was promoted as a gathering to gather broad stakeholder input to inform decisions affecting hundreds of thousands of military families. Understanding who participated in these discussions and how their input shaped subsequent policy decisions helps military families better advocate for meaningful inclusion in future policy development efforts. As military child care challenges continue to affect readiness and retention, ensuring that policy solutions reflect the lived experiences of the families they're designed to serve remains an essential goal for the military community.

OCC Project continues to examine how military family input is incorporated into policy development and will make relevant documentation available as part of our ongoing transparency efforts.