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Environmental scan · Canada · 2024

What's actually available to Canadian Veteran families?

A national inventory of services families can turn to — mapped by type, cost, geographic reach, and whether anyone has ever evaluated them.

Families serve too. But the supports they rely on are scattered across hundreds of organizations, with wildly different referral rules, costs, and evidence behind them. We pulled it all into one place so families, clinicians, and policy-makers can see the full picture.

180+
Services catalogued
14
Categories of support
4
Levels of geographic reach
2024
Snapshot year
Service categories

Fourteen kinds of support, one map.

■
Alternative Treatment
Equine, music, meditation, movement therapies.
●
Community Involvement
Volunteering, local events, civic initiatives.
▲
Education
Courses and workshops, mostly self-guided.
■
Employment Support
Preferential hiring, counselling, job training.
●
Financial Support
Bursaries, pensions, grants, financial planning.
♦
Health Behaviours
Fitness tracking, self-care, holistic health.
▲
Housing Support
Shelter, emergency and medical-travel housing.
●
Medical Support
GP access, chronic pain, virtual healthcare.
■
Mental Health Treatment
Crisis, grief, trauma, OSI counselling.
▲
Peer Support
Mutual aid from people who've been there.
●
Psychoeducation
Mental health literacy for families.
●
Recreation
Sports, vacations, leisure activities.
♦
Spiritual Support
Chaplaincy and faith-based support.
●
Service Liaisons
Help navigating the wider service landscape.
Preview of Services for Canadian Veteran Families grouped by service type
By service type
Grouped by the kind of help you need.

Everything from peer support to financial benefits, sorted into the categories above.

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Preview of Services for Canadian Veteran Families in alphabetical order
Alphabetical list
Every service, A to Z.

Sortable reference with cost, evaluation status, referral requirements, and reach.

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What we learned

The map is uneven.

Most services are free at point of use, but accessibility varies sharply by province. Many programs still require Veteran involvement, which leaves families on their own when a Veteran can't or won't engage. Formal evaluation of outcomes is the exception, not the rule.

This scan is a starting point — for families looking for help, for clinicians making referrals, and for the system as a whole to see where the gaps actually are.

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Prepared by the MacDonald Franklin OSI Research and Innovation Centre, April 2024.