Building Stronger Military Families: Discover the RAFAKidz Resilience Hub
Military family life can be hugely rewarding, but it rarely follows a predictable path. Deployments, postings, changes to routines and periods of separation can all become part of everyday family life. Add work, childcare, and the usual pressures of parenting into the mix, and even the most organised household can sometimes feel stretched.
For military spouses and partners balancing their own careers alongside family responsibilities, can be extremely stressful. Finding practical support that fits around an already busy schedule can make a real difference, and that is where the RAFAKidz Resilience Hub comes in.
Created by the Royal Air Forces Association, the RAFAKidz Resilience Hub is an online resource designed to help serving families navigate the everyday challenges of parenting and service life. Available online and completely free to access, it brings together expert-led sessions and on-demand resources focused on strengthening family wellbeing, developing resilience, and helping parents feel more confident.
Support designed with service families in mind
The challenges experienced by military families can be extremely disrupting to everyday life. A deployment might mean one parent suddenly carrying more of the day-to-day responsibilities, or it can bring a new home, nursery, school, routine, and community. Meanwhile, partners and spouses may be trying to maintain careers or establish new professional networks after relocating.
The Resilience Hub recognises these pressures and provides practical information designed for family life in a military environment. Its online resilience sessions are led by expert speakers and are open to everyone. All sessions are recorded to ensure maximum flexibility for parents.
For those looking for quick tips, or follow-up materials after an online session, there are free-to-access resources online that are created to empower you with strategies that strengthen your own wellbeing as well as your child’s confidence, stability and growth.
Practical help for real family situations
The Resilience Hub resources tackle a breadth of subjects - from managing stress, understanding attachment, sleeping tips, fussy eating, potty training to supporting a child during deployment. Each resource is designed to help you tackle the everyday challenges that family life presents.
The deployment resource, for example, offers simple ways to help younger children understand and manage separation. Suggestions include creating a family photo book, using play to explain what is happening and talking to childcare providers ahead of a deployment so that they can offer additional consistency and emotional support. Helpfully, it also signposts families towards other resources such as: RAF Association Doodle Packs, Reading Force, and Little Troopers, providing you with a range of military-specific support to explore and use.
The Resilience Sessions explore areas such as coping with stress and change, maintaining routines during uncertain periods, parental wellbeing and helping children develop healthy sleep habits. These sessions are free to book onto and give parents the unique opportunity to ask questions and get advice from industry experts that they wouldn’t be able to access anywhere else.
The Resilience Hub isn't about expecting parents to get everything right, it’s about providing families with accessible strategies that can be easily applied to everyday life.
Expert advice that works around you
For busy military families, flexibility matters. The Resilience Hub combines live online learning with resources that can be accessed when they are needed. All Resilience Hub sessions are recorded to give parents maximum flexibility, meaning you can catch up on each session in your own time at a time and place that suits you.
That flexibility is valuable when your working day must coexist with school or nursery runs, changing military commitments or solo parenting. Helpful guidance and resources shouldn’t be confusing, difficult to understand or demand vast amounts of your time; the Resilience Hub is about providing you with trusted guidance that’s available whenever you may need it.
Resilience is something families can build together
Perhaps the most important message behind the Resilience Hub is that families, especially those serving, don’t simply have to ‘put up’ with difficult circumstances. With the help of the RAF Association, services like the Resilience Hub can help families develop strategies that enable them to adapt to change easier and support one another through periods of uncertainty.
For military partners and spouses juggling careers, children, and the unpredictability of service life, can be difficult and knowing that support exists can itself be reassuring.
The RAFAKidz Resilience Hub is a free to use resource, meaning you can bookmark it now and return to it whenever family life presents its next challenge.
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