A counseling center of excellence that serves our military and families
The mind is a beautiful thing—but taking care of it can be complicated and challenging. When you’re a military Service member, spouse, or child, the unknowns of deployment, living away from family, and life on base provides no shortage of distraction, stress, and emotional challenge. It takes readiness, resilience, and problem-solving capabilities to overcome these challenges.
The problem is, building such capabilities isn’t as simple as searching the internet on readiness and resiliency. Pat Walsh, a former colonel with the Army Ready Resilience Directorate, says it’s important for military Service members and their families “to have deliberate resilience strategies.” Leidos’ work on introducing programs such as Adolescent Support and Counseling Services (ASACS), which makes mental health counseling available for adolescents in military families, shows that early intervention makes Service members and their families better equipped to handle the challenges of military life.
Non-medical counseling services provide opportunities for Service members and their families to reduce stressors and build skills for handling daunting physical and emotional situations. This makes non-medical counseling a force multiplier because a commitment to creating well-being, recovery, and healing for everyone enhances military abilities across the board. It can help with things like:
- Anger management
- Building resiliency
- Communication issues
- Conflict resolution
- Coping skills
- Decision-making skills
- Deployment stress
- Grief and loss
- Homesickness
- Parenting
- Reintegration
- Relationship issues
- Relocation adjustment
- Sadness
- Separation
To help achieve these well-being goals for Service members, their families, and Veterans, Leidos partners with the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) Military and Family Life Counseling (MFLC) program to create a team of experienced, knowledgeable, and qualified non-medical counselors that can respond to complex needs.
“The most important way to deliver quality services is by investing our time and energy into supporting counselors to be the best at what they do,” says Von Borg, Leidos’ deputy program manager of MFLC. “Giving them specialty expertise, techniques, practices, and opportunities to grow enables consistently better counseling outcomes.”
The MFLC team of counselors is spread across six regions west of the Mississippi to include Asia and the Pacific. Leidos provides strategy, structure, and collaboration that enables our counselors to deliver consistent and excellent service. Regional supervisors and team leads have comprehensive non-medical counseling experience and impart specialty expertise through coaching and mentorship, enabling teams to effectively respond to unique regional stressors. The right counselors are in the right place at the right time, leading to better counseling results.
Regional supervisors, team leads, and counselors are supported by Leidos’ Counseling Center of Excellence (CCE)—a central hub for expert advice, state-of-the-art resources, and management tools. As military and world events require counselors to handle larger case volumes, increased training requirements, and shorter response times, our CCE support enables them to focus on what matters most—providing quality services to those who need support.
Experienced and knowledgeable counselors, with centralized responsibility, respond better to demands and deploy seamlessly to the areas where they are needed most.
The CCE has a community engagement team of experts to ensure that the MFLC program communicates effectively with its partners. This board collaborates with government stakeholders, academic institutions, subject matter experts, military service organizations (MSOs), and the larger military and counseling communities. Collaboration enables steady growth, increased program awareness, and better engagement, which are the foundations of improved counseling outcomes.
To learn more about the MFLC program, visit us at leidos.com/military-family-life-counseling. Or, if you are a counselor looking to apply; please visit our careers page to view our open positions.
