Who are Dandelion Military Families CIC?
Dandelion Military Families is the passion project of like minded and similarly experienced military mums who over the years have experienced parental mental health challenges and felt discouraged by the traditional support structures available to new parents, in both healthcare and military environments.
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The dynamic and reactionary nature of military life meant that accessing ‘civvy’ support proved challenging; many providers didn’t have any awareness of the unique stressors of military life, or the flexibility to adapt services accordingly. Equally, traditional military welfare support routes didn’t have the specific training or expertise to support either. This left us feeling frustrated and compounded our existing feelings of isolation.
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Motivated by that, and with the encouragement of one another (and our families), we embarked on a mission to change things for other military families, and create something for the community, by the community. Thus, Dandelion Military Families was born, and like all new babies it’s been a real labour of love since! But at the heart of who we are as an organisation is a small team of military mums who want to improve things for the next generation of military parents.
We don’t want them to experience the same loneliness and obstacles we did, because military families deserve to experience the joy of parenting just as much as anyone else.
What makes us unique?
Whilst there are a plethora of very successful and worthy military charities/organisations, what sets us apart is that we are focused on the mental and emotional impact of military life on parenting.
Research and national projects like ‘Shaping Us’, led by the early childhood foundation, highlight the importance of parental mental health and the early years, and yet so little is publicly spoken about that amongst our community. We want to change that; normalise those conversations about the challenges and in the process help people to feel a little less isolated.
We’re also for the community, by the community. And by that we mean that as a grassroots organisation, we’re each living and experiencing everything we talk about. This is fundamental to who we are and proving to resonate with so many in our community. Moreover, we want to build a network of peer support exclusively for military families. This network will be facilitated by peer supporters from the military community; creating connection and a sense of belonging wherever military and parent life may take us.
Seeds of Strength
Our Seeds of Strength peer support network has helped to connect and support military families, but we want to do more. By fundraising, we want to train more peer supporters in perinatal mental health, enabling us to offer a wider range of peer support groups to cater to more of our community, so that no military family feels alone.