Hello. Bonjour.
First of all, I want to thank you very much for this incredible honour. I'm feeling pretty special.
I'm the executive director of the Halifax and Region Military Family Resource Centre. It's the largest military family resource centre in all of Canada. We're responsible for three-quarters of the province of Nova Scotia and all the families and military members who live in Nova Scotia. It's the whole province, except for the valley. I have three locations: one in Shearwater, one in Cape Breton, and of course the large one in Halifax.
We're also unique in that we work with the army, the navy, and the air force. There is no other military family resource centre in the country that works with all three elements. As you know, we have the east coast fleet, we have Land Force Atlantic Area, and of course we have 12 Wing Shearwater there as well. So we have quite a diverse operation there.
First of all, I'm going to be speaking from some notes, and the French translation starts at about page 6, if anybody wishes to follow along.
One of the things we believe is that military families are the strength behind the uniform. If you take care of the military family as well as you take care of the military member, then you're going to have much better Canadian Forces in general.
Our mission, of course, is to promote the health and social well-being of the military families and the individuals who share the unique experiences of military life.
I'm going to give you a tiny bit of the history of where military family resource centres come from. Back in the mid-eighties, there was a group of military family members who were meeting in Penhold. Right across the country there were small groups of women who would get together and form social safety nets, because most of them weren't from where they were living. They would get together, they would welcome new people to the community, they would share experiences, they would show people where to get a doctor and a dentist, and they would share child care services, etc.
The base commander in Penhold didn't think that was right and believed he should have control over military families, so he essentially shut them down and kicked them out and said, you can't be meeting on my base. That was the military's attitude back then: if we had wanted you to have a family, we would have issued you one. Of course, this is slowly changing. There's still some of that attitude out there, but we're slowly getting better. The military is now recognizing that families are incredibly important.
In the mid-eighties there was a lot of rumbling going on. Mary Collins, I think, was quite prominent at that time, and she was meeting with military families. In 1991 the director of military family services stood up—and that's when military family resources stood up as well.
There are 32 of us in Canada. There are also family resource centres in the U.S. and Europe, but they operate slightly differently than we do. The 32 centres in Canada are all charitable, provincially incorporated not-for-profits. We do not work directly in the chain of command; we work for a board of directors, and 51% of that board must be made up of military spouses. So it's very much a grassroots organization; it's very much a case of military families saying what military families need and want, etc., based upon their experiences and the unique challenges they face.
Since the inception of military family resource centres, we've gone through a tremendous amount of growth, scrutiny, and audit. We've been audited by the Department of National Defence on numerous occasions, because they just can't quite grasp the concept that military families can actually do something for military families. Being outside of the chain of command...they get a little bit nervous because they have no control. That's something that always makes me giggle, because the army especially loves to control things.
Anyway, it was during SCONDVA's time back in the late 1990s that we saw huge growth in family resource centres and a recognition by the Government of Canada that these are an incredibly valuable and vital services for our families. It was during the last SCONDVA committee, which toured the country in the late nineties, that we got employment services for our family members, and French and English as a second language services for our families, as well as emergency and respite child care.
A lot of people say, why do military families need anything? What's so different about a military family? Well, I suspect that many of you have experienced some of the things our families have. When you get posted, you have absolutely no control over where you're going. You wind up in a city or a province that you've never been to. You have absolutely no social supports. You've left your families behind, you've left your friends behind, you've left everything you know behind, so you have no extended family or close friends. There may be language or cultural barriers, of course, when you get to your new city or base. Many of our families, of course, have to give up a job, so somebody is sacrificing a career. Many, of course, have to give up or change educational opportunities because they're not available in the city, the base, or the station they're now being posted to.
Many families, when they arrive in a brand-new community, have no idea where to go for information. They don't know where to sign up for schools. They don't know where to go to get a doctor. They don't know where anything is. Many, of course, become quite isolated.
During deployments they become single parents, and that's something they certainly didn't think about or sign up for. The parents and spouses of CF members may have little understanding of the Canadian Forces, and they would be absolutely unsure about where to get information.
I don't know if you've ever spoken to some of our young military members, but when they find out they're being deployed, they're over-the-moon excited and want to go. The information they get about family services and supports and the information about the mission, etc., traditionally doesn't go home to the family.
I spent 21 years in the air force. When I joined and I got to go on a phenomenal posting, the last thing I did was run home or pick up the phone and call my mum out in Alberta and say, “Oh, and if you need this, you phone here”. That was the last thing on my mind. That still happens today. Information doesn't get back to the families.
As I said, we are provincially incorporated charitable organizations. We get about 55% of our funding from the Directorate of Military Family Services. I'm talking about Halifax in particular. This is not the same across Canada. In Halifax in particular I get an additional 10% from Maritime Forces Atlantic. And then we must fundraise the remaining funds or get them through user fees, charging fees for some of our programs and services. So we're not 100% funded by the Directorate of Military Family Services.
Who do we serve? Just two years ago we finally received the mandate to provide services for single members and their parents. That was a big change, and that was one change we had to fight for. Currently we provide services for all the regular forces and reserve forces and their families before, during, and after deployments: married and common-law CF members and their spouses, the children and youth of serving CF members, CF members who are single parents, reservists and their families, and now, as I said, the parents of deployed single regular force members.
We do not have a mandate for released or retired members of the Canadian Forces.
As I said, military families are the strength behind the uniform, and this is what we truly believe. They're strong, they're independent, and they're resilient. Our military families have to make huge sacrifices on behalf of this country and it is totally unrecognized.
They must cope, as I said, with the many unique challenges of military lifestyle. The Canadian Forces, by putting in military family resource centres, has recognized that families are full partners. They play a significant and positive role in the morale and welfare of the deployed members. If the member is in Afghanistan or Sudan or on board a ship and he has to worry about what's going on at home, he can't do his job and he doesn't concentrate on what he's doing. So having the reassurance that families have a place to go for a service or a resource back home is tremendously helpful for the military member.
Family resource centres and the Canadian Forces working in partnership ensure that families have information, that they have the resources and the services to keep them connected, supported, and informed. We provide a huge gamut of programs and services. For welcome services and community orientation when military families are posted to wherever they are posted to, there is an MFRC there to welcome them and help them get oriented to their community. We provide adult, family, child, and youth programs, because the military family is not just a husband and wife; it's everybody who is in that family. We provide language services, English services as well as French services, for any of our families who may be posted to Quebec or posted from Quebec to Halifax.
Our prevention and support and intervention services are crisis intervention services. These represent all the referrals to other agencies in the province: medical services, health services, etc. We provide deployment services, emergency child care, employment and education services, recognizing that many of our families had to give up careers.
We can't do it without volunteers. Last year, Halifax had over 10,000 hours donated by our volunteers. One of the things we're doing that's quite different is our outreach services.
I have a group of staff members who travel all over the province. They will use the local armouries or the local legions and they will invite the families, the reserve family, the reservists, local employers, and members of the community, who perhaps are the padres or the social workers or the people in the health industry in that part of the province. They'll invite them and they'll help educate everybody about the unique challenges of the military and all the different resources that are available to our families and to our members.
One of the things I'm going to talk a little more about is deployment services. Whenever a member is deployed...and when I talk about deployed, I'm not just talking about Afghanistan. We have members in Sudan currently. We've got submarines; we've got three or four ships out, and they've been gone for six months. So we're talking about a lot of people when we talk about deployed.
Our services enhance the ability of the member to be ready for duty and they support the well-being of the family before, during, and after deployment. We ensure families have access to relevant programs and services, that they are aware and prepared for changes and the challenges associated with the deployment, and that families have the opportunity to connect and support each other.
This is one of the key things about how our whole program works. If you get a group of families together, they will mentor each other, they will befriend each other, and they'll become their own social safety net, so they don't have to phone us at two o'clock in the morning when there's a family emergency and they need to get hold of the military member or they need emergency child care or something. They will start developing their own friends and their own social safety net. That's why it's so absolutely vital that families direct and control everything we do.
So during a deployment, every month we get all the families together. They decide what they want to do, if they want to have some kind of a social event or they want to have some kind of an educational event. The commanding officer from the unit or the ship that's deployed will come in. He'll meet with them. He'll tell them exactly where the unit is, what the ship's doing. We have the ships' COs call in and talk to the family members so the families feel they're valued and vital members of that whole deployment team. It's incredibly effective, and the families feel they're heard and they have an opportunity to provide feedback to the CO if they're having any challenges.
We, of course, help families deal with crisis and the challenges associated with deployment. Some of the challenges.... Life happens to all of us. When life happens and all of a sudden there's a severe illness in the family--and that family member could be on the other side of Canada--we can put in emergency services. We can help repatriate the military member or work with the padres or work with the chain of command to bring the military member back and to get the supports for the family so we can deal with the immediate challenges of the emergency. Then we'll help the family member resolve that situation until the member is back.
Some of the other things we do are prevention and education. Our families want information. They want to know what an OSI is. They want to know what PTSD is. They want to know if the money is not in the bank, where they should go, what they should do. They want to know where they find a doctor, where they find this or that or the other thing. If we just continue to educate our families and get this information into their hands, then our military families will carry on and be just fine.
Of course, we do have a number of emergency services. We have emergency funds, emergency housing, crisis intervention, respite, and emergency child care. So when life happens, we're there for them.
I'm going to speak very briefly now about some of the challenges we've seen. These are our experiences. This isn't anything we've gleaned from anybody in National Defence. I've been talking to all my colleagues, and what we experience on a day-to-day basis is that we cannot support or provide information to families if we don't have their information.
Half the time we have no idea who's being deployed or where their family is. A member could be deploying out of Edmonton, but their family could be sitting in downtown Halifax, and if we don't know they're going, we can't put information in their hands. So in the event of a family emergency, they don't know to come to us, and we can't get information to educate them on that. The Vice Chief of Defence Staff has sent out numerous messages to say that the Canadian Forces must provide us with that information and still it's not forthcoming all the time. Some units are very good about it; others are not.
In the event of an injury or the death of a military member, the assisting officers provided to the families are not always educated and trained in all the resources available to them, which in turn means that the families are not educated about all the resources available to them.
The Canadian Forces ombudsman did a study a number of years ago. It's the Wheeler report, When a Soldier Falls: Reviewing the Response to MCpl Rick Wheeler's Accidental Death. The ombudsman at the time made some tremendous recommendations about how the assisting officers should be trained and educated. But it's still very inconsistent across the country. It's hit or miss whether an assisting officer has any education or training about the resources that are available to them, especially from the family resource centre. So it's quite frustrating, six months after the fact, when the assisting officer has gone and the family is still trying to cope with the death or the injury and has no idea where to turn, because they haven't been told about all the resources that are available to them.
We still have a tremendous number of fragmented services. The occupational stress injury support service, OSISS, family support, and many of the other services, are still not linked to military family resource centres. The military family resource centres may not be fully included in the full network of care.
A lot of our health service providers who are working with our families, especially around OSISS and PTSD, are working in silos, and they do not recognize the family resource centres as being partners. They could be working with a released member or a released member's family, and there's so much we could do to help connect and treat the family as a whole. But the families just don't know about it, because we're not being included in the whole network of care. They just haven't recognized the incredible resource they have at their fingertips. It's quite frustrating, especially when we see families and military members suffering because they don't have the whole network of care.
The result of some of this fragmented service is of course that there's a duplication of service and there's a lack of clearly defined lines of responsibility. Quite often, our family members are kind of lost or they just don't know about services that are available.
There is another complaint we're hearing a tremendous amount about, and it's something we're really struggling with in Nova Scotia. Because so many of our military members in the Canadian Forces are originally from Nova Scotia, their families are in Nova Scotia. So they may have been injured or killed, and six months after the fact we get phone calls from brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers saying they're really grieving and they want access to some grief counselling. As a family resource centre, we do not do therapy; we do not do counselling. We have to refer them out, and we refer them to the Canadian Forces member assistance program, which has no mandate to assist secondary next of kin. If you're the primary next of kin, like the spouse, you have access to that service, but if you're a sister, a brother, or a parent and you're the secondary next of kin, you have no access.
So we utilize the Canadian Forces padres, we utilize all the provincial resources available to us, and we work very closely with the provincial medical services to ensure that these families can get access to services, especially grief counselling. Hopefully, we help cut through some of the lines.
Of course, we have funding challenges. We're currently competing with the Military Families Fund for charitable giving, and we have DFMS funding shortfalls. When you're trying to sell a lottery ticket or you're having a bake sale, a lot of people say, “You're military. You're a military family resource centre. You must be fully funded.” So it's a bit of a challenge sometimes.
One of the other big challenges our families are recognizing and have seen for the last number of years is the total lack of full-time day care. There are a number of military families who cannot and will not be posted to Halifax because there's a waiting list of two and a half to three years for full-time day care. It's a huge challenge. Our N1, which is a captain in the navy, has made it his number one priority to see what he can do to enhance day care.
Military family resource centres have absolutely no mandate to provide full-time day care, but in response to the needs of the military community, 21 of the 32 centres across Canada have now had to go into the day care business, because our families cannot get day care.
You usually get about 90 days to move your family, sell your house, find a new home, and find all the resources and everything you need. And when you phone and find out that in the city you're going to, or wherever it is you're posted, there's an 18-month to three-year wait to get full-time day care, it's a huge challenge for our families. It's incredibly difficult to do that in 90 days, and you don't have a mum or a grandmother or a sister to take care of the children for you while you go to work. So it's a huge challenge for our families.
Another big challenge for our families right now, of course, is finding a physician.
I just got an e-mail two days ago from 8 Wing CFB Trenton saying that if you had a posting message in your hand, your family could apply for the lottery to maybe get a family physician. We're penalizing military families, who are already making a huge sacrifice for this country. We're penalizing them because they have to now be posted someplace, they're giving up a family physician, and they're going to a place where they cannot find medical care for their family. Some of the military family resource centres have had to start their own clinics and contract their own physicians so that they can find medical care for their military families.
Of course, one of the biggest challenges is the outreach. It's getting information into the hands of our families, especially our reservists. We try to go up and visit all of our reserve units, no matter where they are in the province. But they have such a small amount of time to do their training, or when they come back, a lot of them release and get out. We just want to speak to them and tell them about the services that are available in case they are suffering from an OSI or have a health care challenge, etc. When they have so few hours to train and the money is so tight, their CO is not going to give up time so we can speak to them about what we can do to support them and their family during the deployment or when they return. So it's a huge challenge to get that information out to all of our families.
Just to sum up, it's not all doom and gloom, of course. We've had tremendous success. We are serving a large number of military families. We are getting much better at it. Every day something new happens. One of the things, though, that I can pass on is that in serving the military member—whether he is released, retired, or a veteran of the Canadian Forces—we need to recognize that it's not just that person who needs to be treated, it's the whole family, especially when it comes to health services and health care and issues of OSI and PTSD. Because it's the whole family that suffers, it's the whole family that's going to heal, and it's the whole family that needs those resources and that support. So treat the member, but treat the family. Treat the vet; treat the family. Take care of everybody, because that's going to be a lot more successful for all of us.
Thank you very much.
