Parenting across the deployment cycle raises special challenges for military families with young children. The Strong Military Families (SMF) Program aims to improve the resilience and wellbeing of military and veteran families through the delivery of a positive parenting program. The SMF Program includes military service members, their spouses or partners, their young children from birth to 8-years-old, and older siblings. The program is unique in that the whole family participates. 

The SMF program incorporates a parent group curriculum and a corresponding child group curriculum, and is designed to address five core pillars: 1) increasing social support, 2) broadening positive parenting strategies, 3) enhancing parent-child connections, 4) learning stress reduction and self-care, and 5) connecting families to resources. 

The University of Michigan has directly supported the delivery of the Strong Military Families program to families in their community:

380 family members served in the SMF Program

5 branches of U.S. armed forces represented

The program is also offered at other sites, including Easterseals Michigan, delivering services in their communities.