Occupational stress injury support system. There's one for families and there is one for soldiers. They are separate. We meet and we talk about things.
The MFRC is for family, but it's for the everyday goings-on of the family. I actually had several issues when my daughter deployed. I couldn't get her son health care in Canada. Go figure. For a year and a half, nobody wanted to cover him. That, ladies and gentlemen, is terrible. MFRC couldn't help me. One of the psychologists at the MFRC said, “Well, she's a single mom. Why would she deploy? What kind of mother would deploy?” This is what we're dealing with. They aren't all like that, but this particular social worker at the MFRC was doing a maternity leave. She wasn't their ongoing one.
The MFRC just isn't equipped. They are not trained, and they just don't want to talk about it, to be quite honest.
I must say that if it weren't for OSISS in St. John's.... I might add that as a mom, I belong to an OSISS group made up of mostly spouses—there aren't a lot parents in Newfoundland—and we have this thing that we don't want everybody knowing our business, so it's kind of hard to get the parents out. I'm trying to promote that.
I got word on Wednesday that my daughter was finally getting in to Homewood. I went to the floor crying, I was so excited. I had a meeting the next day with my OSISS group, and I was scared to death to tell them, petrified. I was excited; I wanted them to know, but I knew those other spouses and parents would be upset because it wasn't their soldier, and they've been waiting longer than mine has.
This is what we deal with on a daily basis.