EXCEPTIONAL FAMILIES OF THE MILITARY

Founded in 2020, Exceptional Families of the Military (EFM) is a volunteer-led, non-profit organization specializing in helping Military families enrolled in EFMP in all aspects of their lives. The EFM staff is an all-volunteer staff with ties to the military and a relationship with an individual enrolled in EFMP or who has a disability. We believe that our volunteers bring a unique insight into what the families we serve experience because the members of our team are living through the same issues, making them able to not only empathize but also guide families through their journey using tools they have learned in their personal lives. We utilize a unique approach to serving our families in what we call our "Three Pillars of Support." The Three Pillars of Support are: Family Support, Research, and Government Policy and Legislation Reform.

Under our family support pillar, we serve families in our peer-to-peer support groups and 1:1 Family Support. Our Peer-to-Peer Support groups serve over 14,000 EFMP family members in the DoD and Coast Guard. We provide 1:1 direct family support when peer-to-peer support is not sufficient.

We take a unique approach to the way we support and survey EFMP families. We select the majority of the topics for our annual survey from the most talked about topics in our peer-to-peer support groups, the remainder of the topics are selected based off of interactions with command and policy makers. We then use these topics to inform what our government policy team works on for the following year’s NDAA.

We acknowledge that wide-sweeping change is needed across all branches of the military; our Government Policy and Legislation Reform team works on our legislative priorities to ensure that changes are made that benefit all military families affected.