The Parents Portal
Welcome to the Parents Portal
To our Army parents: A Big Happiness welcome to the Beacon Brief online portal!
As parents, our biggest aim in life is for our children to grow up happy, confident, and successful. We would all dearly love for our children to only experience the good times. However, life is not always so simple. Challenges are part of everyday life and it is how our children cope with these challenges that will determine their happiness and success, both now and in the years ahead.
Military children experience many unique stresses, notably concerned with transitions and deployment, but also including frequent re-location, and re-integration. They also can experience challenges before, during, and post a parent's deployment (e.g., fear, worry, depression, loneliness, anger, added responsibility, low self-esteem, isolation).
The COVID-19 pandemic has also been challenging for everyone, including children. Disruptions to routines, staying at home, changes at school, and isolation from friends and family will have had an impact on their mental and emotional health.
Add in the health challenges and other uncertainties that many families face, and it's easy to understand why children may be feeling overwhelmed.
The Beacon Brief has been designed to provide the maximum support to you and your children and includes additional activities, printable resources, and videos for the children that offers you a range of practical suggestions to support your trainee Everyday Explorer as they practise their new Safe Signals and discover their eight special strengths. .
This online portal should be used in conjunction with, ‘The Adventures of an Everyday Explorer’ book, which has been written specifically for Army children, to help them not only cope with challenges, but also boost their confidence, whilst cultivating a mindset of self-awareness.
Both the book, and this online portal provide knowledge, tools and techniques that will equip them with a greater understanding of themselves and provide life-altering practices for your whole family.
We are confident that with your support and active participation in the activities, your children will not only develop a greater understanding of how to keep calm and positive in challenging times, such as a parent’s deployment, a relocation, or other transitions, but also how to cultivate a happier, more resilient character and mindset.
Helpful Links
You may also find the 'Helpful Links' page useful as this contains direct links to other organisations, services and experts that we highly recommend to support you and your children with topics around mental and emotional health.
Your Space
The Your Space section of this online portal is dedicated to our Explorer families. This is a gallery for both photographs that capture Explorer moments or pictures that the children have drawn themselves.
The Your Space section of this online portal is dedicated to our Explorer families. This is a gallery for both photographs that capture Explorer moments or pictures that the children have drawn themselves.
The artworks that are currently displayed in the gallery are the competition entries from which a winner was chosen to be featured in the book itself.
The Request Station
We would also value your feedback on an idea that we feel could greatly support you and your children. This is The Request Station. The Request Station is a concept that brings 'Jimmy's letters' to life in real time family situations. If your child is struggling with some big emotions or feeling anxious or worried about something, then you can send a notification into The Request Station, and this would generate a personalised 'letter from Jimmy' addressed to your child. This letter would contain firstly, acknowledgment of his/her feelings, then a suggestion (or two) about which Strength they may have lost their connection to, and which Safe Signal would be best to practise to help ease their current situation.
The Request Station can also be used to congratulate your Explorers on big achievements, or recognition that they have been practising their new - found strengths in certain situations that you feel warrant special acknowledgement from 'Jimmy'!
If you would like this additional service, and could see the value in us offering this, then please could we ask you to complete the section below.
Further Reading Resources
Click the image or the button below to download our additional reading and resources for parents.