Caring for Injured Families

“Injury to a parent is a major threat to children of all ages and a challenge for even the most resilient of military families.”  So says the National Child Traumatic Stress Network in the section of their website devoted to military families. 

The Child and Family Program for the Study of Traumatic Stress (CSTS) is a Category II site of this network. This program conducts research and disseminates information about the impact of combat injury on service members, their families, and children. 

The CSTS program has developed ten Principles of Caring for Combat Injured Families and their Children  to guide the practice of medical and community service providers. The wording of these principles is loaded with jargon, which I will try to cut through here.

  

■■”Psychological first aid” is primary. Providing families with a feeling of safety and comfort, includes providing practical information and connection to available resources so the family can believe in its own effectiveness to handle the situation

■■ Medical care must be family focused. Families must continue to function and communicate and injury care must support this need.

■■ Service providers should anticipate a range of responses to combat injury.  Most service members, their children and families will adjust in time but some may struggle with the consequences to their lives and even require treatment for their own problems.

■■ “Injury communication” is essential. Information should be timely, appropriate and accurate, but also “calibrated to address patient and family anxiety and to sustain hope.”  Families uncertain how and what to tell their children should receive guidance from professionals. 

■■ IInjured family treatment must be age appropriate.

■■ Injured Family care is a long-term commitment, extending all the way through the rehabilitation process. “Interventions must meet the family where it is within the recovery process, recognizing a family’s unique strengths and challenges, as well as anticipate its future needs through transition to a new community or new way-of-life.”

■■ Effective Injured Family care is a group effort. The family, the health care system, and military and civilian community resources are all parts of a collaboration.

■■ Care must be culturally competent. Healthcare and community professionals need cultural and language competence  to work with families, traditional and otherwise, with varying ethnic and religious backgrounds.

■■ Barriers to effective service to the injured family must be addressed.  “A community’s lack of awareness or misunderstanding of the needs of a combat injured family or a family’s reluctance to seek assistance (due to stigmatization) can also limit family intervention and recovery.”

■■ Families, communities and service providers must be knowledgeable. Quality educational materials to address the challenges that confront combat injured families must be accessible. These help families build skills and become empowered to survive and thrive in their changed world. 

All very sensible and for the most part self-evident.  This should provide an excellent checklist for evaluating, and proposing, services to help military families.