Evidence Gathering
Other Reported Issues Medical The main concerns in 2011 focused upon IVF treatment. Issues included: the problems faced by Service families attempting to access funding for IVF treatment; the disparity between the different Primary Care Trusts’ eligibility criteria; and problems accessing IVF treatment whilst posted on a permanent overseas assignment. We highlighted these issues to the Department of Health advocate as part of our work with the Armed Forces Covenant Reference Group to demonstrate the disadvantages Service families face because of their mobility.
Definition of the Family Issues raised included: the lack of recognition of unmarried partners, either with or without children, within existing MoD policies; the rights of divorced parents who have shared custody of their children, in particular the problems faced when trying to access suitable accommodation; the lack of recognition of young adults within Service families and their lack of entitlement to remain in SFA.
Overseas Assignments Issues raised included: the impact of overseas assignments on the family household income; the lack of employment and training opportunities for non-serving family members; the lack of recognition of young adults within the family and the problems faced when trying to access medical and dental care overseas.
Proactive The Federation prides itself on the proactive approach it takes to gathering evidence on family-related issues. If we were to rely simply on the reactive evidence described in previous pages, whilst we would have excellent data on core issues such as housing, we would be limited in our ability to represent families’ views on broader issues such as the SDSR, pension reform, or the Armed Forces Covenant.
Moreover, we would not have the opportunity to get out and meet serving personnel and their families to gain their evidence in person, an aspect of our work that we all value highly since it gives far greater depth to our understanding of the issues impacting on families around the RAF.
Each year we therefore devise a set of surveys that explore a much wider range of topics than those represented in our Issues database. For 2011, our chosen themes were:
Future Accommodation To inform the work of the Future Accommodation Project Team in MoD. This survey explored current allocation policies, homeownership, options for future delivery of both SFA and SLA, and the perceived benefits of living in the RAF community.
RAF Way of Life To inform the Armed Forces Pay Review Body at our annual formal evidence session. Questions covered pay and allowances, pensions, money management, temporary separation, operational tempo and work/life balance. A bespoke Reserves version was also run to capture their unique experience of Service life.
Impact of the SDSR/Armed Forces Covenant A new survey aimed at measuring the impact of the SDSR on families and initial views on the Covenant. Questions covered redundancy, force reductions, confidence in the future of the RAF and its senior leadership and early awareness levels of the Covenant. In addition to these core surveys, which were run with audiences at unit level and online, we also ran online surveys on the following subjects:
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