Examination of Witnesses (Questions 360-379)
30 JUNE 2004
MRS DENISE
MURPHY AND
MRS MORAG
ANTROBUS
Q360 Mr Cran: Have you done it?
Mrs Antrobus: Personally, no.
Q361 Mr Cran: Do your officers?
Mrs Murphy: If that recruit or
young soldier was likely to harm him or herself—
Q362 Mr Cran: No, I do not mean that,
I mean in relation to the training side.
Mrs Murphy: You mean if the problem
was raised by one of the recruits regarding the training staff?
Q363 Mr Cran: No. If a member of the
training staff has a problem, comes to you, wants to explain it,
we have just been told by you that this is on the increase, and
all I was simply asking was, would it come within your competence
to go to the commanding officer, or your representative, and say,
"Oi, you have a problem here"?
Mrs Antrobus: Absolutely.
Q364 Mr Cran: And you do that?
Mrs Antrobus: Absolutely.
Mrs Murphy: Yes, because it would
affect what we are there to do, what we are there to provide.
Q365 Chairman: In terms of record-keeping,
we would not want names obviously, but could you write to us and
give us some idea of your workload and the kind of problems you
are facing? That would be really helpful for us[6]26
Mrs Murphy: We have some stats
we can send to you, because what we record on a monthly basis
is not just the number of recruits who go through the clubs, it
is the number of issues that the soldiers raise, and that could
be anything from missing their Mum and Dad, to the dog has died,
to my girlfriend has decided to leave me. We have the whole of
last year which you can see. From January to May we had 137,000
recruits through the clubs and about 2,600 of those were welfare
issues. So there is lots of throughput. That is a good thing we
think because it highlights two things really. One, they may not
be dealing with the issues, but, two, at least they are coming
to us to try and help them resolve their problems.
Q366 Chairman: Do you produce an annual
report?
Mrs Murphy: No, not really. We
are in the process, because of the assessments we have just carried
out when we wrote to each of the commanding officers, of writing
a report as feed-back from that actual survey. I can give you
a copy of that as well[7]
Q367 Chairman: Please, that would be
very helpful. Another thing which would be quite helpful is if
you would not mind sending us a copy of your training manuals.
Mrs Murphy: The induction programme?
Q368 Chairman: Yes. That would be really
helpful because then we would know the kind of things you are
telling your people. That would give us an idea of what they are
saying to their clients.
Mrs Murphy: Fine.
Q369 Mr Roy: How happy are you with the
current structure of welfare teams at initial training establishments
and how consistently do these tears meet? Do you meet for the
sake of meeting?
Mrs Murphy: No.
Q370 Mr Roy: What is the feeling when
you do get together? Is it on an ad hoc basis?
Mrs Murphy: I defer to Morag because
she has been involved in those meetings.
Mrs Antrobus: Again, in the last
two years, we have seen more formal meetings being introduced
but they have always been there. Certainly in the locations I
have been in and certainly in the training regiments, there are
regular welfare meetings for the full team. That will be everybody
from the NAAFI staff who play an important welfare role, up to
the commanding officer and the unit welfare officer, the quartermaster.
Then there will be a smaller body, a bit like your committee,
when it is the people who will be dealing with the more sensitive
welfare cases, who have a look in depth at what is actually going
on. At the same time, there are always ad hoc meetings,
because things are happening almost on a daily basis. So you might
decide to have a very impromptu meeting by going to see the padre
and the doctor.
Q371 Mr Roy: Is there a requirement that
these teams meet?
Mrs Antrobus: The commanding officer
will say, "My welfare team is meeting every Thursday afternoon"
and some have that many meetings. They will meet on a weekly basis.
Some meet fortnightly.
Q372 Mr Roy: That worries me a bit insofar
as you say it is the decision of the commanding officer. Does
that mean it can change from one commanding officer to another,
depending on his or her attitude?
Mrs Antrobus: Yes.
Mrs Murphy: Yes, it could.
Mr Roy: That is interesting.
Q373 Mr Crausby: The two-tier reappraisal
of initial training in July last year noted that, "In some
establishments, instructors were openly hostile to WRVS staff
and what they referred to as other `busy bodies' . . .".
To what extent are instructors receptive or hostile to you?
Mrs Antrobus: This is quite a
difficult one really to answer. I think the culture of the Armed
Forces has changed in the last five years, and I think the people
who perhaps are openly hostile to us are becoming fewer and fewer
and fewer. I think because we enjoy an open door policy to the
commanding officer, it can leave people in the chain of command
a bit nervous about what we may be taking to him. I do not think
it is any more sinister than that. They know we can actually just
by-pass everybody in the chain of command, which is more than
his most senior officers under him can do, go and knock on his
door and he will never say no to us; he will say, "Come in
and sit down."
Q374 Mr Crausby: So to what extent does
that make them more hostile? As you say, it is a macho environment,
and I can imagine some hard-bitten sergeant does not like the
idea of young recruits going to see you and then you going to
see the commanding officer.
Mrs Antrobus: I think it is no
more than historical and the culture of the way the Armed Forces
have been, particularly in some regiments within the British Army,
but as I say that is becoming less and less and less.
Q375 Mr Crausby: How do you deal with
that? How do you go about improving relationships?
Mrs Antrobus: We do have this
induction both at ITGIS at Lichfield and in all the training establishments
on a rolling programme. We are invited to stand up and do the
presentation to permanent staff and point out to them that we
are part of the welfare team and that we are there to offer them
support and the value that we can bring to their job. So, for
example, we can give unlimited amounts of time to a young recruit
who is going through a bad patch, irrespective of what the problem
is, and if he or she wants to sit for three hours and tell us,
we can do that and not feel pressurised because there is something
else waiting to be done. So it is us really having to sell ourselves
to the training staff and say, "We are all part of the same
team."
Mr Crausby: Thank you.
Q376 Mr Cran: You have made it abundantly
clear that if a problem arises with a particular corporal or whoever,
you can go straight to the commanding officer, and that I understand,
but what happens if the chain of command in any particular establishment
is unresponsive? Where else do you go? Do you go to ATRA?
Mrs Antrobus: We could. Could
I say, it is not always about going directly to the commanding
officer. If it is a member of the training staff, the same as
if it was a recruit, you would try and see where to put it, so
it may be that if it was a corporal you would just go and find
his sergeant and say, "We have a problem here, are you going
to deal with it?" If he deals with it, fine, if he does not
deal with it, then you go—
Q377 Mr Cran: To the next level?
Mrs Antrobus: Exactly.
Q378 Mr Cran: I am trying to find out
how heavy your boots are, that is all. In the extreme case, if
the chain of command in a particular establishment was unresponsive
and your SWO was worried about it and takes it up with you or
the area director or manager, where else would you go? If it was
serious enough, would you take it to ATRA?
Mrs Murphy: Without any hesitation
whatsoever, because if we ignored that, we would not be carrying
out the role for which we are employed.
Q379 Mr Roy: Can I just ask on the back
of James's question—if the problem is a corporal and you
go to the sergeant, and the sergeant deals with it, do you check
at the end of that circle there is no retribution coming down
the route?
Mrs Antrobus: Most definitely.
It is a question of following it through to make sure, and if
the recruit has taken the time and effort to come to you in the
first place, if it is not resolved they will keep chipping away
at you. If it is resolved, they usually come bounding in through
your door to say, "Thank you very much indeed and everything
is great."
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