Examination of Witnesses (Questions 380-399)
30 JUNE 2004
MRS DENISE
MURPHY AND
MRS MORAG
ANTROBUS
Q380 Mr Cran: It is also the case, because
of the job the SWO is doing, that sensitive information, confidential
information, is gleaned from whoever it is who has the problem.
How is that information documented, processed, passed on? Just
talk us through that, because I have not got a sense of that yet.
Mrs Murphy: It is personal notes.
We used to operate a system whereby a book was held within the
office and fairly detailed information was written into that book,
but because of data protection and the confidentiality of the
issue, we asked the services welfare offices to stop doing that
but they clearly understood they needed some aid to record certain
issues. Therefore we asked them to keep personal notes of anything
that is serious enough to have to go into notes.
Q381 Mr Cran: I am talking about confidential
information, sensitive information, relating to a young lad who
has got a problem. Would that go into these notes or not? I mean
the routine staff that your officers are doing. Where is that
going?
Mrs Antrobus: The chances are,
if it was that sensitive, we would not even hang on to the problem
in the first place, we would refer it to the appropriate agency.
Obviously what we would be doing is saying to this young person,
"This is so important, in order for us to get this right
for you, then we need to put it with . . . " and identify
the agency. It is usually either somebody in the chaplaincy, the
Army Welfare Services, or one of the other welfare agencies which
can actually act upon that information they are being given. So
one of the things that we try to do is not hold sensitive information
at all.
Q382 Mr Cran: You are talking about important
problems where you would sign over those people to an agency which
can solve the problem. What about routine stuff? That does not
go down on paper either? No record is kept?
Mrs Murphy: It only goes down
so we can put the stats together, so it will be, "Saw five
people tonight regarding debt problems" or something like
that.
Q383 Mr Cran: And no name attached?
Mrs Murphy: No.
Chairman: A couple of weeks ago we had
some interesting evidence about a certain part of the country
which my Celtic background prevents me from saying—
Mr Cran: It was in fact Wales!
Q384 Chairman: Cardiff!—where there
were a lot of problems, potential problems, amongst the 500 recruits
in the Cardiff area which were analysed by the Ministry of Defence.
They talked about the high number of people coming from broken
homes, classified as coming from deprived backgrounds and we were
told in the evidence that 40% joined the Army as a last resort.
My own view was that perhaps it was wrong to draw conclusions
from one specific area but I wondered, because the Welsh are a
pretty tribal bunch and I assume most of those who come from the
Cardiff area probably end up in one of the units where the Welsh
predominate, as do the Scots or the Irish, have you—and
if there is any problem with confidentiality please write to us
because we would not want to abuse our position here—found
there are certain areas where the range of problems which you
encounter are of a different order of magnitude from any others?
If that is the case, do you send your best people there? Do you
have to put in additional resources? How would you cope if you
found a camp where, for all sorts of reasons, the problems are
much more complicated and more difficult to deal with?
Mrs Murphy: It has not really
occurred but what I can say is that with the training regiments
we select people—and I use this term quite a lot—square
pegs and square holes, and we really look at the environment those
individuals will be working in and make sure they have got the
right strengths to go in there. But I do not think we have had
particularly higher cases in some areas.
Mrs Antrobus: I think it is probably
more to do with the type of trade they are going to go into. For
example, you will find you probably have more young people in
the infantry regiments who have for a variety of reasons been
socially excluded, excluded from school, come from broken homes,
all the things you have said. The minute you move it up to somebody
at 18 and Winchester, you are going to find a very high calibre
as opposed to people who are going definitely into the infantry
regiments.
Q385 Chairman: If you chat with your
colleagues afterwards and do find you can answer the question
more fully, we would be really grateful if you would drop us a
letter.
Mrs Antrobus: Of course.
Q386 Chairman: We are very concerned
about bullying, and you have referred to this a little earlier,
what advice do you give to your operatives on how to detect bullying?
Do people come forward and say, "The corporal is giving me
a bad time", "The guy in the next bunk is giving me
a really hard time"? How do you react to this? Are you anxious
about the question of bullying or do you think it is rather exaggerated?
Mrs Antrobus: Not really. I go
back to what I said earlier, in most cases it tends to be in the
peer group and not within the system itself. You can usually tell.
Because we enjoy having a facility which is social, it is not
just about young people coming to us with problems, they come
in just to chill and meet their friends, watch a DVD, play pool,
do whatever, because you are spending such a lot of time with
them in their social environment where they are relaxed, you can
usually identify if somebody has a problem. Sometimes they will
just come straight out with it and say what is happening. Maybe
their friends will come and say, "I think you should have
a word with . . . ". The chain of command might have picked
up on it and will ring us and say, "We know there is a problem
but this person is not speaking to us."
Q387 Chairman: If you look through your
records, would you be able to tell us how many cases there were
in the last one year, two years, three years, which might indicate
a problem of bullying, even by fellow soldiers or sailors?
Mrs Antrobus: Not sensibly.
Q388 Chairman: Because you would not
have enough cases or you have not recorded them?
Mrs Murphy: I must say in my three
and a half years I have not come across any cases of bullying,
but that is not to say it does not happen because I am sure it
does, it happens in most workplaces. Our stats will show whether
there is a problem because of Army life or home life or relationships
or medical, but not necessarily be that specific to specify bullying.
Speaking for Morag for a moment, I have spoken to services welfare
officers and the other side of the coin is that sometimes recruits
say, "I am being bullied" but there is another reason
and they want to escape from the Army, whatever it is, and we
have to be very careful not to just say, "Okay we will take
this forward" because there is a lot more discussion which
needs to take place if someone puts that flag up.
Q389 Chairman: If you look at the media
in the last 12 or 18 months, you would have the impression that
a soldier's prospect of not being bullied by somebody was almost
zero, that this is the source of many people leaving the Armed
Forces, that it is an intimidating environment. If that was the
case, half right or a tenth right, surely you should be picking
up these vibrations. Is it that there are not any vibrations or
the way in which you are configured means people do not want to
tell you about these things, they will talk about their mother
dying but not about the guy in the next bunk who is making their
life very difficult?
Mrs Antrobus: I think there is
a generation thing that is at work here in the use of the word
"bullying". What you and I might perceive in that word
is one thing, but what a 16 year-old will perceive as bullying,
particularly in that environment, is not bullying, it may be harsh
discipline but it is certainly not bullying, and the harsh discipline
is there for a very, very good reason because they could end up
12 months down the line fighting a war. So you cannot afford to
make that training regime too soft. I think sometimes there is
confusion in their minds about what bullying actually is.
Q390 Chairman: We asked a question a
couple of weeks ago to some people, not in your profession, about
what signs they would look for in seeking to ascertain if somebody
was troubled, potentially suicidal. What sort of advice would
you give your colleagues about the signs? I was not entirely convinced
of the explanation. I mockingly said, and it was not meant to
be in any way harsh, that this could apply to any group of people,
not people who were about to commit self-harm. What advice would
you give them to look out for?
Mrs Antrobus: It is very, very
difficult, I will be honest about it. I think one of the first
things you start to notice is that normally 16, 17, 18, 19 year-olds
are very noisy and boisterous by nature, and that you could perhaps
be looking for somebody who was normally very outgoing and suddenly
going very quiet. That might not mean they are going to self-harm
but it is usually a good indicator that there is a problem lurking
somewhere in the background. So I think it is watching for differences
in personalities. With the numbers who go through in a busy facility,
we could have 500 or 600 recruits and trainees in at one time,
and you will not know them all that well all of the time. So it
is very hard to write a set of rules.
Q391 Chairman: I am sure. If it is possible,
when you have time to reflect on this question, if you do find
anything, it would be very helpful, because this is a matter of
some concern and we need to be satisfied if there are signals
screaming out then people in the system are able to pick them
up, so knowing what the signs are is obviously very important.
Mrs Antrobus: Except our newest
members as SWOs, our SWOs in the training regiments go, with the
Army, on suicide awareness courses which are run through the medical
centres, which I am told—I have never been on one myself—are
very, very good. I am sure we could get you the information on
those courses.
Q392 Chairman: That would be very helpful.
Mrs Murphy: I think the biggest
indicator would be in our clubs, and one thing we say to the services
welfare officers in their training is not to be particularly interested—although
it is not that we are not interested—in a group of guys
playing snooker or pool, look around and see if there is someone
on their own, and that is usually an indicator and we ask them
to specifically look for isolation.
Q393 Mr Roy: In the sphere of room for
improvement in the future, I am a great believer that welfare
needs to be taken far more seriously both individually and collectively,
and I do not believe welfare means someone is too soft; I believe
that someone has to recognise welfare is a strength. The WVRS
has identified some areas which could be improved and they have
said, for example, a higher ratio of training staff to recruits.
We have already heard earlier today there is a ratio of 1:38.
Do you think that is enough?
Mrs Antrobus: I think it is high.
I think it should be lower.
Mrs Murphy: I do, yes.
Q394 Mr Roy: I have to say when I heard
the ratio was 1:38 that it did seem rather high. The number of
WRVS staff has recently increased, and we have heard from the
Chief of Staff of ATRA. Do you feel you now have an adequate presence
at Army initial training establishments?
Mrs Murphy: We discussed this
earlier. We would ideally like more because again it is ratios,
is it not? The more services welfare officers we have, the more
we can spot those 100 people in a club who come in. At the moment,
they usually work on their own because they work back-to-back
shifts, but ideally, if we had more then I think we would be in
a position to identify more perhaps. I know you feel strongly
about that one, Morag.
Mrs Antrobus: It is like everything,
is it not, the more people you have got on the ground dealing
with those numbers, then the more you are going to be in a position
to identify where the problem areas are, who is having difficulties.
Like the training staff in the very busy ATRs, especially the
last weekend before pay day and certainly at a weekend, when often
we are the only facility which is open for these young people,
you could have a thousand going through just on a Saturday and
Sunday.
Q395 Mr Roy: My argument for needing
more, for example, would be: are the WRVS there as a cost or an
investment? And I actually think they are an investment because
I think in the long-term they do save costs.
Mrs Antrobus: Yes.
Q396 Mr Roy: Because they save an awful
lot of problems. Could you explain, where does the money come
from in the first place? Who puts up the argument for it and to
whom?
Mrs Antrobus: It comes from the
MoD, the full grant, but the colonel of a training establishment
has to put forward his arguments and he has to find that money
from his budget.
Q397 Mr Roy: That is determined on the
CO's attitude, I take it?
Mrs Murphy: Yes.
Mrs Antrobus: I can see where
you are coming from but most commanding officers would have five
of us in there if he could afford it.
Mrs Murphy: It does depend a lot
on the CO but it also depends on Colonel ATRA as well because
they have an input—
Q398 Mr Roy: I am sorry? Who?
Mrs Murphy: The colonel responsible
for ATRA. He would take a very active role in looking, and has
looked, at the numbers we employ, hence the reason we have taken
on another nine, so it is a bit of a dual role really. Morag is
right, we get services welfare officers saying, "The commanding
officer wants another two", and I have to say, "It is
not as simple as that, we have to go through the channels and
then it has to be funded", because these people are paid
employees, as I said earlier.
Q399 Mr Roy: If someone made the argument
for a larger grant from the MoD, because that is where the money
comes from, if it was laid down there was a realisation this was
an investment, because it does stop my constituents being bullied
or, unfortunately maybe even committing suicide at the very end,
therefore it is an investment, what difference would that larger
grant make either to you, given your extra staff, or yourselves?
How do you quantify what more money would mean to yourselves?
Mrs Murphy: We do not decide what
facilities are available in the clubs, that is really to do with
the commanding officer. The argument I have put forward in the
past is, give us better facilities which will encourage the soldiers
to come in, which will allow us to identify any problems. The
additional funding would allow us to pay for additional services
welfare officers.
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