Families: Research into the impact on service families of ‘weekending’

August 21, 2020

The Naval Families Federation (NFF) has recently published research examining the lifestyle of Royal Navy and Royal Marines families.  This research, carried out by the King’s Centre for Military Health Research, offers an invaluable window into the implications of geographically dispersed families and ‘weekending’, where the serving person lives away from home during the week.  The vast majority of Royal Navy and Royal Marines families live this way, as do many in the Army and RAF. Furthermore, this trend is likely to be increasingly reflected across all three Services in the future.

One immediate result of the project is the production by the NFF of a resource for parents and carers. Titled ‘A Guide for Parents and Adults Supporting Children and Young People’, the publication was created by the NFF to offer strategies and encouragement for families affected by all forms of separation and those who support them. One finding of the research was that there is a general lack of appreciation that shorter separations still have a significant impact, and the booklet is in part designed to help address that. To read the research please download A Guide for Parents and Adults Supporting Children and Young People.