DIRECTOR
FROM THE
As usual when the time comes for me to write for Envoy, I’ve just fl icked back through the diary to remind myself of what we have been up to over the last couple of months and I’m struck by how busy the whole team has been over the summer and early autumn. Obviously, this is a really good thing because there’s nothing worse than listening to them whinge about not having enough to do – but it does also refl ect how much input we are being asked for and how many initiatives and issues with which we are involved.
Director
As many of you will know, we’ve tried to attend as many unit families’ days as possible, partly because it’s a great way to judge the ‘barometer reading’ of how RAF personnel and their families are feeling about Service life but also because it’s the part of the job that we all really enjoy the most. We sent some of the Team on a dash to Europe and visited SHAPE, Brunssum, Ramstein, Uedem and Cyprus to bring back and report on some of the overseas-specifi c issues people have. We’ve captured your views and thoughts through our surveys on childcare, the Future Accommodation Model, quality of life in general and life as a member of the RAuxAF. Response rates this year to all our surveys have roughly
doubled on previous years, so a huge ‘thank you’ to everyone who contributed. Please keep fi lling in the surveys and encourage your work colleagues, families and friends to do the same – the more people who do so, the more weight and infl uence the results carry. Remember, you can fi nd our survey reports at the website –
www.raf-ff.org.uk.
What have we done with all this info? Well, it’s been used to help paint a picture for the Minister for Defence Veterans, Reserves and Personnel and the Chief of Defence People, the Armed Forces Covenant Reference Group, which addresses Covenant policy and issues of disadvantage caused by military service, the Armed Forces Pay Review Body, the Armed Forces Pensions Board, senior RAF staff at HQ Air and Joint Forces Command, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (accommodation issues still top our issues list by some distance), CarillionAmey, MOD staff dealing with the MOD Families Strategy, the Future Accommodation Model and Service Welfare, the RAF Association and RAF Benevolent Fund, and last but by no means least…you. We know that we cannot make policy but we can help to infl uence it for the better – so your
voice is important and remember that silence is often taken as meaning that everything is OK.
Moving on, we have welcomed some new members of staff to the Federation: Louise has joined us to manage a two year initiative funded by the Forces in Mind Trust (FiMT) into family transition from the RAF into civilian life. And Lisa has taken up the role of AF Covenant Manager for the East Midlands-ish region. A very warm welcome to both. Keep an eye on the website for job vacancies with us – they do pop up occasionally – and if you’d like to volunteer as an unpaid (sorry, the budget is tiny) supporter to work at unit level on our behalf, then do please get in touch.
Finally, given this is the winter edition and assuming you are reading this before Christmas, have a great break. And for those of you deployed on Ops, together with your families, thank you, stay safe and remember that the rest of us will have you in our thoughts.
4
Winter 2016
www.raf-ff.org.uk
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