Dandelion Military Families CIC was incorporated in April 2023, we are a grass roots organisation committed to improving parental mental health in the military community. Set up by three military spouses who have experienced perinatal mental health issues, we recognise how difficult it can be to reach out for help, not knowing where to turn for fear of judgement. During the financial year 2024-2025 the organisations activities have benefited the military community in the following ways: Continued to support the online community we created in the previous year, committed to honest conversation around military parenthood. Through social media we raised awareness about many issues experienced by military spouses and shared experiences to help make people feel less alone. Our trained peer supporters continued to support our military community in perinatal mental health. We also supported military families dealing with domestic violence and helped to ensure their safety and shelter. We continued to engage with a number of military and healthcare stakeholders to bring the voices of the military families to the forefront and have been invited to collaborate on a range of projects to ensure that military families have a voice. We continued to participate in a research advisory group role for the University of East Anglia. We continued to pilot our ‘Kindsbaum’ initiative (which in German means ‘child’s tree’) as a celebration of a new baby and mothers in the local area. A metal dandelion stake is placed in the front garden of the new mother to signify the arrival of her baby along with a gift hamper for both mother and baby. We were incredibly proud to contribute to the Make Birth Better report on birth trauma, helping bring the experiences of military families to the forefront of an important national conversation. Military life can add unique layers to pregnancy, birth, and early parenthood - from partners missing births due to deployment or training, to navigating pregnancy away from support networks, frequent moves, and the realities of solo parenting. It was important to us that these experiences were seen, heard, and recognised within conversations around birth trauma, ensuring military families are not overlooked in the support, understanding, and care they deserve. We were involved in the “March for Mothers” campaign, which ran alongside Maternal Mental Health Awareness week in May last year. It was a campaign focused on raising awareness of maternal mental health, birth trauma, and the need for better support for mothers and families in the perinatal period. We marched to Parliament as part of a group of organisations representing parents from many different backgrounds/communities. We launched a new website and domain to add some professionalism to our organisation: www.dandelionmilfamilies.org We were invited to hold a parliamentary event at Portcullis House, bringing the voices and experiences of military families directly into the heart of government. We were able to have conversations with Members of Parliament and policymakers, a number of them who sit on the Defence Select Committee. An extremely engaging and encouraging meeting that has since opened up further conversations about what military families actually need and how to ensure they are supported properly.

The company’s stakeholders are parents within the military community. The directors of the company are military spouses and mothers and the ethos behind creating a community focused on honest conversation around military parenthood is something they wish had been available to them to access in the early days of their own parenthood. The directors developed the business model for the organisation based on their own experiences and talking to other members of the military community. We regularly ask our community to take part in surveys across our social media platforms, to understand the impact of the services we offer to them. We also send out feedback forms to those who have taken part in any events we have run. We also elicit feedback during interactions with families such as our 1:1 and group peer support sessions. Any and all feedback we receive is used to ensure we are supporting the community in the best way possible and in a way that is accessible and beneficial to them as stakeholders.

No remuneration was received

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration