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Pilot Projects wrap-up

Director Military Family Services (DMFS) has received some questions regarding the status of the pilot projects from Military Family Resource Centres (MFRCs).

Eight pilot projects were undertaken in the areas of child care, deployment and reunion, education, employment and mental health and support. All pilot projects have now been concluded, and thank you letters have been sent to all participating Centres.

The pilot projects were meant to be trials and tests to determine the validity of taking an idea from a local or regional project into a national forum. In all cases, they provided recommendations on the relevance of select programs for potential use within the Military Family Services Program (MFSP). 

The majority of the pilots were successful, and demonstrated some potential for nationalization. These projects were among the 31 enhancements which DMFS presented to Chief Military Personnel (CMP) at the end of May 2010. The whole suite of proposed enhancements will next be presented to Armed Forces Council for their endorsement and direction this autumn.

Some of the reasons that certain projects were not recommended for nationalization include:

• Inability of DMFS to obtain intellectual property rights for the program from a third-party organization;
• Inability of the MFRC to produce a program that can be delivered equally well in both English and French;
• An equally appropriate and useful program is already available off-the-shelf (in these cases, DMFS is pursuing the already existing option to ensure that resources are not needlessly duplicated);
• Deliverables were not received from the MFRC in time to be submitted with the Enhancement Initiatives package which went to the CMP for approval. The success of these projects still needs to be assessed and they may be recommended and implemented at a later date.

Once DMFS receives approval for the selected projects from Armed Forces Council, funding for the enhancements will have to be sought from within the Department of National Defence and/or from Treasury Board.  This will be a lengthy process – Treasury Board submissions can take upwards of two years to process.

DMFS reiterates our thanks to all MFRCs who participated in the Pilot Projects – your work has played an important role in proposing the future direction of the MFSP. We look forward to sharing more news about the proposed enhancements for the MFSP in the coming months.