DMFS

• DMFS Update
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
• Training
  • Presentations and Training
• Funding Central
• MFSP Participant Survey
• Research
• C/MFRCs In Focus
  • Submission Guidelines
• Resources for C/MFRCs
  • Children's Deployment Support Program
  • Key Reference Documents
  • Forms
  • MFRC Board Orientation and Training Kit
  • C/MFRC Contact List
  • MFSP Logos
  • Second Language Training
  • Policies and Standards
  • Publications
  • Research
  • Deployment Support Database
  • Family Violence Prevention and Awareness
• Useful Links

Identifying the Composition and Location of Military Families

Whether your Military Family Resource Centre (MFRC) serves 50 families or 1,000, Chief Military Personnel (CMP) wants to know where they are.

At the Canadian Forces (CF) Family Services Summit II in January 2009, Major-General Walter Semianiw, CMP, designated locating and reporting the compositions and locations of CF families as a top priority for Director Military Family Services (DMFS) and MFRCs.

“We need to know where your families are located,” Major-General Semianiw said. “For the CF leadership to know which services are necessary for military families and how much funding is needed, we need to know who you’re serving.”

Determining the locations of all CF families is integral to the success of the CF Family Services Enhancement Initiative. As the Military Family Services Program transforms, it is key that the enhancements made and the new programs developed are reflective, responsive and accountable to the needs of all CF families. Knowing where families are will help Centres reach out more adequately to all CF families, from those who live close to the MFRC and those who need remote services, to those who visit every week and those who drop in once per year.

In February 2009, DMFS began its work by conducting environmental scans of all MFRCs to discover how Centres currently identify, collect and report information on the compositions and locations of the military families they serve. Once the environmental scans are completed and analyzed, DMFS will work with MFRCs to create a user-friendly, reliable template for the collection and management CF family information, and will pilot the template at select MFRCs in April 2009.

Launching the project as a pilot first will allow DMFS to work in collaboration with MFRCs to make any necessary changes, adjustments and clarifications to the information gathering and reporting processes before the template is presented for use across the country. The final template will be released to MFRCs in June 2009, allowing each Centre time to complete their information collection and report their findings to DMFS by August 2009. In September 2009, DMFS will provide a report to CMP which will give an all encompassing picture of the geographic area served by each MFRC, and the families who live there.