Families matter: A partnership of partners to study, serve, and support the families of military, Veterans, and public safety personnel

The Partnership Development Grant provided us the opportunity to build bridges across existing knowledge mobilization institutes with an interest in military, Veteran, first responder, and public safety families. Within the partnership development process, we were able to bring forward families into these occupational areas. In the beginning, we had to say “and families” a lot, introducing the idea that families are in these spaces too and play pretty significant roles in helping to keep operations going by managing things at home. Over time, we noticed that the conversation had shifted more to a “families of” folks who serve. From there, we’ve seen it evolve even more into the question “What about the families?” For some, they won’t have thought about families in this context. Others are actively working to bring families forward. During this grant, we were able to bring forward a committed group of researchers under a united front – the Families Matter Research Group. Here, we focused on our assertion that “families matter, unequivocally and in their own right, independent of the experiences and needs of the serving personnel.” We also did a close mapping of family science in Canada to inform what the next generation of families researchers needs in their foundational toolkit. We saw exponential growth in the employers, labour associations, service providers, researchers, and policy makers who were committed to joining the effort to better serve families in these jobs, shifting from three at the beginning of the grant to almost 50.