The Marine Corps is in the process of taking a family readiness program away from paid civilians and placing its responsibilities in the hands of Marines, a service spokesperson confirmed to Military.com on Thursday.
The Unit, Personal and Family Readiness Program, or UPFRP, was originally developed in 2007 to keep up with constant deployments during the Global War on Terrorism, according to a service message from 2018, and was designed to provide support for service members and their families during the deployments and other challenges that come with military life.
In April 2024, the Marine Corps decided to begin divesting the program’s civilian roles, which are often taken on by military spouses (and non-spouses), citing “resource constraints and evolving operational requirements,” according to Maj. Jacoby Getty, the spokesperson for the service’s Manpower and Reserve Affairs division. Those responsibilities will begin falling to Marines themselves.
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The “civilian staffing structure” is expected to completely shut down by fiscal 2030, and the plan is currently on track for completion by that time, Getty said, though he added that “we remain prepared to adapt if necessary.”
Getty said that, prior to the Marine Corps’ adoption of the civilian staffing structure nearly two decades ago, family readiness programs and positions fell under the responsibility of Marines. Now, with the sunsetting of civilian jobs under this program, Marines will once again take on those tasks.
“The UPFRP remains a key program that Marines will execute rather than civilians,” Getty said in an emailed statement Thursday. “Bottom line — it isn’t going away. However, due to resource constraints, Marines will need to execute all facets of the program, similar to how it was done in the past.”
This isn’t the first time that civilian positions within the Marine Corps’ family readiness programs have undergone reductions. In 2017, the service announced a forcewide hiring freeze as it reviewed funding for civilian jobs in the program.
In the midst of that freeze, the service restructured the UPFRP, announcing that “after more than 13 years of sustained combat operations, the Marine Corps is in a reset period, refocusing programs that support Marines and their families,” according to a 2018 message.
The result was that civilians who already had jobs under the program and were not affected by the ongoing hiring freeze were redesignated. They were no longer called family readiness officers, or FROs, but assigned into three categories: deployment readiness coordinators, recruiting readiness coordinators, and reserve readiness coordinators.
By June 2018, the service lifted the freeze and allowed commanders to begin hiring civilians to fill vacant personnel slots.
Deployment readiness coordinators play a central role in active-duty units by communicating with families and Marines alike about upcoming deployments; helping set up deployment-related events like welcome home celebrations; welcoming new families to the unit; and ensuring that family members of deployed Marines are supported while their loved one is away, among other roles.
Getty said that there are currently 149 DRC billets in the Marine Corps. While the service did not specify how much a DRC civilian is paid, those roles fall under a pay scale where salaries could range between $25 to $58 per hour, depending on the job, in 2024.
Civilian family readiness jobs are staffed by spouses and non-spouses. The paid positions often provide income and stability for Marine spouses amid frequent duty station moves and other military stresses that can affect employment.
“They were certainly good opportunities for military spouses to contribute to their household income,” Katherine Kuzminski, the director of studies at the Center for a New American Security who was an Army spouse in the early 2000s when family readiness programs were beginning to professionalize in the military.
“We see across society that it is a larger requirement to have two incomes within a family, and that removing these opportunities can have a deleterious effect on military spouses,” she said, adding that it might affect not only their current earnings, but long-term job prospects.
“If civilian employment opportunities go away on military installations, and we have families who are PCSing on a regular cadence … then it’s more likely that they will not be employed at one installation,” she said. “That compounds over time, because then they are less competitive candidates at the next installation if there are job opportunities there because they have a larger gap in their resume.”
When asked whether the Marine Corps was concerned that divesting the UPFRP’s civilian roles would take job opportunities away from military spouses, Getty said that the service “is coordinating with human resources to develop guidelines for the drawdown that will support, as much as possible, the reassignment of employees into similarly skilled positions within Marine Corps Community Services.”
In other areas, the service had been making recent moves to lighten the additional responsibilities for Marines so they can focus more on their designated jobs.
For example, it has been hiring civilian barracks managers at various installations across the force, taking that responsibility away from junior Marines who now don’t have to worry about scheduling check-in times, following up on work orders, or other responsibilities that come with managing housing.
For the family readiness program, Kuzminski said that “if we’re focused on lethality in our Marines, if you’re transitioning the responsibility for care for families within the unit, especially during a deployment situation, back to the uniforms, that’s putting another thing on their plate.”
While there is still a lot of coordination in the existing structure between civilian family readiness roles and unit commanders, “these family readiness civilians were a really important part,” she added.
When asked whether the divestment of civilian programs would increase the workload for Marines, Getty said that the service “is assessing the statutory requirements that guide the Unit, Personal and Family Readiness Program to ensure it is executed in the same outstanding manner as it has been in the past.”
“Our program will continue to meet the operational needs of our Marines and their families,” he said.
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