S.Amdt. 713

SA 713. Mrs. HUTCHINSON submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by her to the bill S. 1050, to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2004 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe personnel strengths for such fiscal year for the Armed Forces, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

On page 123, between lines 15 and 16, insert the following:

SEC. 565. SUPPORT SERVICES FOR FAMILIES OF DEPLOYED MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES.

(a) Access to Services.--Chapter 88 of title 10, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end of subchapter I the following new section:

“Sec. 1789. Support for families of deployed members

“(a) Interservice Family Support Network.--The Secretary of each military department, and the Secretary of Homeland Security with respect to the Coast Guard when it is not operating as a service in the Navy, shall enter into a cooperative agreement to provide an interservice family support network in the United States. “(b) Access to Family Support Services.--The interservice family support network shall be designed to ensure that--“(1) the dependents of each member of the armed forces (including a member of a reserve component of the armed forces) deployed away from the member's permanent duty station (or, in the case of a member of a reserve component, deployed away from the commuting area of the member's residence) have access to family support services at the military installation that is nearest to the dependents' residence, without regard to whether the installation is an installation of the same armed force as the member; and “(2) the appropriate family support services personnel of each such installation administer an ongoing outreach program to establish relationships between the sources of family support services at the installation and dependents of members of reserve components in the population potentially to be served under the circumstances described in paragraph (1). “(c) Reserve Component Family Support Coordinators.--(1) The cooperative agreement entered into under subsection (a) shall provide for the designation of family support coordinators to assist dependents of members of reserve components throughout the United States with the resolution of issues involving access to family support services from the interservice family support network. “(2) The duty to provide services to the dependents of members of the reserve components shall be distributed among the family support coordinators on a geographic basis commensurate with the geographic distribution of the population of such dependents. “(d) Executive Agent for Network.--The Secretaries of the military departments and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall designate the Chief of the National Guard Bureau to serve as executive agent for the administration of the interservice family support network established under the cooperative agreement entered into under subsection (a), including the system of reserve component family support coordinators required under subsection (c).”. (b) Clerical Amendment.--The table of sections at the beginning of such subchapter is amended by adding at the end the following new item:

“1789. Support for families of deployed members.”.