An Investigation of Parental Satisfaction with School Counseling Services Provided for Children of Deployed Military Personnel

Abstract

School-age students who are dealing with major life stressors at home may suffer academically due to preoccupation with their personal crises. Studies have shown that students’ performance in school often plummets because of some personal crisis within the home environment. School counselors who are implementing a comprehensive and developmental counseling program have a duty to offer responsive services to students who are in need of personal and social counseling interventions. Because of the state of our nation during the course of the past few years, there have been many children of deployed military personnel attending public schools. These children often suffer emotionally and psychologically because of this intense period of separation from their parent or parents. School counselors who work with children of deployed military personnel will be able to provide them with appropriate counseling interventions that they need to overcome the likely barriers to academic success. The primary purpose of this study was to explore the level of parental satisfaction with school counseling services offered to children of deployed military personnel. Additionally, this study was concerned with describing the various reactions to parental deployment among school-aged children based on the nature of the parental deployment. By gaining insight and understanding regarding parental satisfaction, school counselors may adjust their programs in order to better meet the needs of these children and their parents. Forty-five parents completed a 17-item Military Parent Questionnaire (MPQ) developed by the researcher. This survey captured the nature of the parent’s deployment, certain demographic information (gender of deployed parent, age and gender of children), and nature and satisfaction level of counseling services provided for the children. Descriptive statistics and Chi Square were used to address the research questions. The results of this exploratory study provided a description of the nature and type of public school counseling services that were provided for children of deployed military personnel. The results also showed that while many of the participants in this study indicated that their child might have benefited from some form of counseling within the public school, their child did not received any counseling from their School Counseling program. These results are important to consider when designing and implementing a Comprehensive Counseling and Guidance program within the public school system that serves children of military dependents.