YOU AND THE RAF Education
The Report featured the introduction of a Service Pupil Premium (£200 per child per year, rising to £250 in 2012) aimed at helping schools provide additional support to Service children affected by mobility and parental deployment. Payment relies on the Service parent registering their child as a Service child with the school in the annual pupil census in January so, if you want your school to benefit from this funding, make sure you register. We await details as to how schools are actually spending this money as guidance to date has been very limited – why not ask your school what they have done with the funds?
It also reported the introduction of a £3m School Support Fund, to which schools with high ratios of Service children can apply for additional funding. Our NFF colleague sat as one of the panel members to award funds to schools under this scheme and reported some excellent projects. Again, why not find out if your school is eligible to apply?
Allocation of school places remains a challenge for many Service parents and the Report highlights the review of the Schools Admissions Code, details of which should be available in 2012. We have emphasised the need for access to schools outside the normal allocation process to compensate for late-notice assignments, and also the need for siblings of similar age to be placed in the same schools.
Finally, access to affordable, good quality childcare is addressed and the requirement for Local Authorities to ensure that Service communities are taken into account in Childcare Sufficiency Audits has been mandated, albeit pressure on local authority budgets does not necessarily mean that all needs can be met.
Housing
The Report highlights the impact of mobility on the ability of Service families to enter the housing market and also comments on the condition, availability and maintenance of the Service housing estate. The reported three year ‘pause’ in the SFA upgrade programme was widely seen as evidence of the Covenant being broken even before it was published and all three Federations continue to work with senior DIO staffs to secure appropriate investment in quarters and, indeed, Single Living Accommodation, where many serving family members live, having opted to settle the family elsewhere and commute to and from the duty unit.
www.raf-ff.org.uk Envoy Spring 2012 39
The Report highlights the Future Accommodation Project, to which the three Federations have provided evidence, the Next Generation Estates Contract and the DIO Transformation programme, with particular emphasis on customer care. We will continue to represent the needs of SFA occupants at every level and monitor developments, providing feedback to families as and when we can.
On the home-ownership front, the Report states that 93 serving personnel have purchased a property through the Armed Forces Home Ownership Scheme, of whom 22% were RAF. Further options to promote home ownership are under active consideration by the Future Accommodation Project team and work is also in hand to ease access to social housing for those transitioning into civilian life.
Family Life
In the chapter on Family Life, the Report focuses on the impact of military life on family members and highlights continuity of education, the impact of separation due to ops, and employment of Service partners. One issue the Federations have campaigned on was the difficulties of transferring CRB checks from one employer to another, which had a disproportionate effect on mobile military partners. We were therefore pleased to note that measures to improve the portability of CRB certificates will become law in 2012.
The Report highlights the role of Armed Forces Champions in each Job Centre Plus district and reports on work to ensure that access to benefits such as Job Seeker’s Allowance (JSA) should not be barred on the grounds that a non-serving partner voluntarily gave up previous employment. If he/she resigned as a result of an assignment, entitlement to JSA is secured, subject to them meeting all other criteria for the allowance.
Conclusion – We think we made a difference! We hope you will agree that the involvement of the three Service Families Federations, supported of course by evidence from the chain of command and the charity sector, has ensured that family life in the Armed Forces has received close attention throughout the Covenant process. Consequently, the Report highlights successfully the impact of Service life on families and recognises the need to protect them from disadvantage incurred as a direct result of belonging to the Armed Forces community.
Our job now is to monitor implementation of the many commitments made in the interim Report and to shape the future direction of Covenant activity by providing evidence of continuing disadvantage. Your job is to understand the Covenant and provide evidence to us where you think further work is required to deliver the Government’s commitments. Over to you!
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