National Defence committee  I can speak from a family perspective. The reality is that there's a strain on services at a local level. The issue in Petawawa is more the immediacy of the provision of that support versus the lack of provision of that support. As I said, we have worked with our local mental health services to try to raise the priority level of our military families, and we have been very, very successful around operational stress injuries, as an example.

National Defence committee  The $2.2 million is our total budget capacity. The $923,000 are the funds that we get--under the parameters that have been circulated--to deliver the core programs through the MFSP program. The delta between that is achieved through a number of means. It could be through provincial partnerships, local United Way fundraising fees, those other means.

National Defence committee  Correct.

National Defence committee  That's correct. Certainly in local areas you may have opportunities that may not be present in other areas. You may be able to work very closely with the local base commander or the United Way or the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities to enhance, as Celine said, the basic level of provision according to your community's needs.

National Defence committee  I think with respect to the four days, there's a lot of opportunity to decompress. There's also a lot of education and information that is passed to the soldier in regard to going from the site of operations back into home--how to make that transition successfully, and what some of the challenges have been that perhaps a family has faced to help them have an understanding of what they're going back to.

National Defence committee  I'm sorry, I don't have any.

National Defence committee  I certainly can't comment on the military, but what I can say is that in Petawawa that's part of the reason for our partnership with the Phoenix Centre for Children and Families and their children's mental health services. We went from 10 families to 90 families that were expressing serious issues relating to their own mental health and the mental health of their children that they were directly linking back to the service of their military member.

National Defence committee  Yes, it went from 10 families identifying to 90 families presenting within about a year.

National Defence committee  Might I provide a little bit of clarity on that? Perhaps I wasn't very clear with my other comment pertaining to when military members are diagnosed. In that case, the linkages are very clear and relatively well established. When it is not a diagnosis, that is when there is the lag time and often, due to the lack of psychiatric capacity, diagnoses take a while.

National Defence committee  I'm not telling you that wholeheartedly; it's just that DND does not have authority over families. It's very much a partnership approach whereby the information is given to the military so that the outreach capacity can in fact occur. Did you want to add anything to that?

National Defence committee  When we speak about the military member having to identify it as a priority for him that his family receive information or receive support, what I'm referring to is that often there will be a host of issues that have been raised and identified. And if the military member is in denial or is not able to actually focus on the issues external to himself, that's when the family can sometimes fall through the cracks.

National Defence committee  In Petawawa our budget is about $2.2 million to $2.3 million. We received about $923,000 through the MFSP.

National Defence committee  Good afternoon. My name is Theresa Sabourin. I'm the executive director at the Petawawa military family resource centre. I have been the executive director there for the past 20 years, so pre-inception of the MFSP program. I'm delighted to be here today to talk to you about fragmentation of services relating to OSIs.