Military families raising neurodivergent children

This qualitative study explored how British Armed Forces families raising neurodivergent children accessed and maintained support while managing relocation and deployment. Families described supports as fragmented and frequently disrupted by moves, with parents often acting as the main coordinators of care. Maintaining support came with substantial emotional, occupational and financial costs. The authors highlight the importance of coordinated services, proactive communication and effective handovers to reduce disruption and support family wellbeing.

Why is this important?

• Neurodivergent children sometimes require stable routines, specialist education and access to health and support services. For military families, frequent relocations and parental deployments can make it difficult to maintain this support over time.
• Although research has documented the challenges faced by military families raising neurodivergent children, there is limited understanding of how families access, maintain and experience support across changing locations, systems and services.

What did they do?

• The authors explored how British Armed Forces families raising neurodivergent children understood, accessed and sustained formal and informal support while managing military mobility and deployment.
• Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 parents and caregivers of neurodivergent children aged 3–17 years. Their children either had formal diagnoses or were undergoing assessment related to autism, ADHD and other neurodevelopmental or co-occurring conditions.
• Interviews examined experiences of diagnosis, education, health care, military welfare, deployment, parenting and informal support networks.

What did they find?

• Families described support as something that often had to be continually rebuilt rather than something consistently available. Relocations frequently disrupted diagnostic assessments, healthcare pathways, educational supports and professional relationships.
• Parents often became the main coordinators of support, carrying records between services, repeatedly explaining their child’s needs, navigating systems and advocating for access to support.
• The effort required to secure and maintain support had emotional, occupational and financial costs for families. Some participants linked caregiving responsibilities to exhaustion, reduced career progression and difficulties maintaining employment.
• Formal and informal supports were valued but often depended on individual relationships, local knowledge and geographical proximity rather than consistently available systems.

What does this mean for practice?

• Services working with military families should consider how deployment, relocation and changing support networks may affect both child and caregiver wellbeing, particularly for families with complex needs.
• Families should not be expected to overcome service fragmentation through persistence, advocacy or resilience alone. Practitioners can help reduce this disruption by preparing clear handover information, communicating proactively with receiving services and avoiding unnecessary repetition of assessments or family histories.

This summary is one of the child mental health research highlights for September 2026, prepared by the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS).