Thank you.
Thank you for having us here today.
There are two more areas that I'd like to talk about. The first is about making sure there are services and programs available to members of the CF and their families wherever they are and whenever they need them.
Of course, after people come back from deployment, they and their families keep moving around the country. Symptoms of PTSD, for example, can take years to manifest themselves. We need to make sure that whenever the symptoms come up, or whenever family members need access to services that will help them or provide care for the family members, they have access to them, whether they're in Shilo, Goose Bay, or London. We've seen these needs met in a few ways.
For example, a new association, Military Minds, was recently incorporated. They grew out of a need that they identified through an online forum. They basically provide a network of connections. Family members, members of the CF, and veterans go on this website and ask or manifest their needs, talk about what they need, and say what area they're in. Military Minds works to connect them with services and programs in their area to make sure that whenever they need things, wherever they are, they have access to those programs for support.
The military family resource centres, or MFRCs, across the country are also a great source of support for the members of the CF, veterans, and families. Whether it's support around deployment, like Shilo, which is facing one last deployment, or whether it's post-deployment, like Valcartier, where there's a big need for that, they have support for the children and for the spouses.
More and more we find that it's the parents of the new recruits who need the support as well. There are a lot of new recruits and young reservists who are still in university and whose parents don't really know what's going on with the military, and don't really know about the military community. There's a growing need for support for those parents, to keep them informed and also to keep them informed on how to identify symptoms of mental illness. When their kids, those young reservists, come back and are at home, the parents oftentimes are the first people to see those symptoms. If they are aware of ways to deal with that, and if the resources are available for their children, they can access those services as early as possible.
The last thing we'd like to mention is that care for ill and injured members is not limited to basic health care. A lot more goes into that. There are lots of different components of health. That includes relationships, education, housing, and that sort of thing. It's important to provide support for the families and to make sure that the parents, as Bronwen was saying, can have access to emergency child care so that they can access health services for themselves.
There's also a lot of spousal support needed for families. Spouses need support networks when they move to new communities. If they're francophone and they move to an anglophone community, then.... In Winnipeg, for instance, their MFRC has about 30% of their members listed as francophone. They organize four different types of activities for people to have that network of support where they feel comfortable when they move into that community.
Bronwen was talking about retrofitting vehicles and homes. It's a way of making the injured soldiers feel comfortable, and feel like they can still contribute to family life. Just being able to drive their children to school, not having to rely on their spouse for everything, it's a way for them to feel helpful again, to feel they can contribute to their community and to their family.
The last area is lots of family and community support. We can see family retreats across the country, where people will host military families for a weekend. It's just a time to step back from the daily challenges of military life. Spouses can take some time by themselves, either for workshops on parenting or just some time alone, and their kids can go and meet other youth of the same age to talk about the challenges they're facing. The younger kids can be taken care of while the parents go away and spend some time alone.
A lot of MFRCs also have a lot of community-building initiatives and programs that are very helpful to families and make sure those relationships and that sense of community are strong and are taken care of for those members. The physical health is taken care of, but the mental health is also taken care of.