Thank you for the question.
I was surprised by a number of pieces. I was really surprised that none of the adult children were able to access supports, and I was quite surprised that the recreational piece was the main support.
The other piece that I found surprising was looking at the Veterans Affairs website and trying to get a sense of the policies. There was definitely a lot of discrepancy between.... In the description, it talked about the families being “integral” to the well-being of the military member, yet they had to really fight for any kind of support. Those kind of contradicted each other, because it was recognized that their well-being helps the military members, yet at the same time they really had to jump through hoops. All of the families found that it was not an easy process, unfortunately.