Examination of Witnesses (Questions 586-599)
MRS ANN
BOAL, REVEREND
ANDREW RAWDING,
MRS GILLIAN
GRIGG, MRS
ROSALIND DILLON-LEE
AND COMMODORE
TOBY ELLIOT
23 FEBRUARY 2005
Q586 Chairman: Good afternoon. As you
know, we are looking at some options on possible ways forward
for reconciliation, ways of dealing with Northern Ireland's past
with a completely open mind. We spend most of our time listening
to victims and victims' organisations, which in a way covers you
as well. We are meeting in private, although our evidence will
be published. Given that we think probably there is going to be
an election in the not too distant future, we will be making an
interim report, probably at the end of March, and publishing the
evidence that you and others have given us so that everybody can
see how far we have got and what views we have received. You are
representing four organisations. Could you briefly tell the Committee
what is the main objective of the organisation you represent?
Commodore Elliot: I am Toby Elliot
and I am the Chief Executive of the Ex-Services' Mental Welfare
Society, otherwise known as Combat Stress. We have been going
since 1919. We care for veterans of all three services suffering
from combat-related psychological injury, nationwide.
Q587 Chairman: Is there any particular
facet of your work on which Northern Ireland concentrates?
Commodore Elliot: Yes. We have
about 3,000 active cases at the moment; 600 of those we are dealing
with are veterans in Northern Ireland, most of them home service
soldiers from the Ulster Defence Regiment and the Royal Irish
Regiment. They constitute about 20 per cent of our work. We are
particularly concerned about them because they are extremely preoccupied
with concerns for their personal security. They are unwilling,
for instance, to access treatment through the National Health
Service in Northern Ireland, and indeed in many ways are a forgotten
group of security service people.
Q588 Chairman: They are unwilling, even
today?
Commodore Elliot: Even today.
Q589 Chairman: Is that because of fear
of identification, or what?
Commodore Elliot: They believe
that their personal security is at risk if they go to their GP
or to the NHS.
Q590 Chairman: Do you have a permanent
member of your staff over in Northern Ireland?
Commodore Elliot: We have three
welfare officers who work, based in Belfast but operating throughout
Ireland. Quite a lot of veterans of the Armed Forces of course
are living in southern Ireland as well. With regard to treatment,
we do two things. First of all, we have our own treatment centre
but it is in Scotland. About 15 per cent of this group goes to
Scotland with their families for treatment. In addition, we have
just started using the Omagh Centre for Treatment and Transformation.
We are just starting up a pilot scheme with them to try to treat
some of these men who will not go outside Northern Ireland. That
has been very successful. We have our own psychologist, who also
works with this group.
Q591 Chairman: That is a very interesting
aspect of the problem. If, at some future date, we wanted to talk
to your welfare officers in Northern Ireland, would you mind that?
Commodore Elliot: That would be
terrific.
Q592 Chairman: We turn really to something
very similar, I imagine, though not for those with mental problems,
the Northern Ireland Veterans' Association, and Reverend Andrew
Rawding.
Reverend Rawding: I am Chaplain
to the Northern Ireland Veterans' Association. I am a former British
army officer myself, so I am a veteran. I served in Northern Ireland
for two and a half years in the early Nineties and was involved
in a number of significant incidents when friends of mine died
and I survived near death experiences.
Q593 Chairman: With whom did you serve?
Reverend Rawding: The Royal Regiment
of Fusiliers. I am representing the Northern Ireland Veterans'
Association and our aim is to meet the needs of our membership
and all military veterans and their families affected by the conflict
in Northern Ireland. We provide advice, assistance and support
with remembrance, reconciliation and help in coping with the effects
of post-traumatic stress disorder and emotional and psychological
recovery. We are a support service, a signposting service, to
veterans of the conflict in Northern Ireland. That is for veterans
across all the services, although primarily our membership is
from the Army.
Q594 Chairman: Mrs Boal you represent
the Disabled Police Officers' Association.
Mrs Boal: I am the co-ordinator
for the North Ireland Disabled Police Officers' Association. Our
organisation was set up in 1983 by a few police officers who had
been seriously injured in the "Troubles". It went on
for 17 years as a support group and managed by volunteers. In
2001, we closed the organisation down and reopened the following
day as a company limited by guarantee with charitable status,
reverting back to our original constitution, which was to provide
benefit to all police officers who had been seriously injured
in the service of the Police. Due to a lot of political changes
in the last four years, namely when they changed from the RUC
to the PSNI, the lack of welfare officers resulted in the Police
no longer looking after the needs of ex-officers. It was about
then that I was coming on board to work as an employee. We then
had to take up the mantel that welfare had looked after in the
past. We had 205 members seriously injured with severe brain injury
or they were triple amputees, many double amputees, and quite
a few had post traumatic stress. Our organisation deals with everything
from potential suicides to the provision of artificial limbs.
We have a help line. We take approximately 50 to 60 calls a week.
Only two of us work in the office. We run eleven different projects,
including internal and external reconciliation. Following on from
something Toby Elliot said, yes, we find the same thing with perceived
security. In the light of what has happened in the last two years—Stormont,
Castlereagh and in particular the Royal Victoria Hospital—it
would be a joke to ask a policeman to go to see a psychiatrist
in the Royal Victoria Hospital. For a start, they will not give
their details. Some of our members have PTSD at 70 per cent, so
they are in a very high banding, and there may be a few from E4,
which would have been covert operations, who cannot go to a doctor
they do not know and talk about their experiences. It is the same
with hospitals, even for injuries. If someone is limbless it is
written on his chart how he was injured. In our organisation we
raise funds, through donations and other means, and we vet who
we are going to use for medical treatment. Our organisation pays
privately.
Q595 Chairman: What funding do you get
from the Government?
Mrs Boal: None.
Q596 Chairman: I should have asked both
of you that?
Commodore Elliot: The treatment
for qualifying war pensioners is funded if they come across to
Hollybush House; otherwise we pay for it ourselves.
Reverend Rawding: We do not get
funding from anybody. It is not so easy to say what funding people
get from the Government because a lot of organisations in Northern
Ireland are receiving funding. They may not say it is from the
Government but that it is European peace money. We do not receive
any funding from them either. In fact, when we went to the Northern
Ireland Office, they refused even to consider funding for us.
Q597 Chairman: You should have said the
taxpayer? That covers a slightly wider ambit.
Reverend Rawding: The taxpayer.
Mrs Grigg: I will explain who
we are. Both Mrs Dillon-Lee and myself are members of the War
Widows' Association. I am the Public Relations Officer. We are
a registered charity formed in 1972. We are all war widows or
associate members of the War Widows' Association. We work from
home. We have no headquarters and no official funding. We are
a lobby group and we work with the government of the day to improve
conditions for all war widows and their dependent children. We
take forward issues with the Government, policy issues and any
issues we have concerns about, for war widows. We offer a service
to our members as a signposting organisation for assistance, both
practical and as a friendship group. We offer each other mutual
support. We hold national events and local groups offer support
on a local basis. We publish a newsletter four times a year with
information about changes in legislation which may affect our
members. We also advertise social events and keep members up to
date with anything going on that may be of interest to them. We
offer support to war widows of all ages from the three services.
We have members based in Northern Ireland, many of them UDR widows;
we have a group over there and most of those will be UDR ladies.
Throughout the UK we have various other members who have been
widowed, either in Ireland or elsewhere, through terrorist activity.
Rosalind Dillon-Lee is a war widow.
Mrs Dillon-Lee: My husband was
killed by an IRA terrorist in Germany 15 years ago. I am a member
of the War Widows' Association. We are also starting an Army Widows'
Association and I am on the steering committee. I can give you
an idea of what life is like on a personal basis.
Chairman: That will probably come out
in the questions.
Q598 Mr Hepburn: You have already answered
one of the questions in your brief opening about the services
your members need and those you provide. You have also said that
your provision is not as adequate as you would like because of
lack of resources. What services do your organisations provide
that statutory bodies could possibly not provide as well as you
do yourselves?
Commodore Elliot: In answer, our
point of view is that of course the responsibility for the health
of veterans rests with the National Health Service. The provision
of social care rests with the Social Services. Because of this
preoccupation the veterans in Northern Ireland have with their
personal security and because of the very inadequate way that
their transformation from being a home service solider to being
a civilian is managed—I think that is still the case today,
and it is most certainly true of the people we look after—they
are not being connected up. Even if there are attempts to connect
them up, they are unwilling to access the services, for the reasons
I have given. Part of that is due to their poor mental state.
It is very difficult to get someone suffering from post-traumatic
stress disorder or deep depression, or whatever it happens to
be, to work at his problem and work with a mental health practitioner.
That is part of the problem as well. In terms of what we would
like, I have worked very closely with the Police Retraining and
Rehabilitation Centre. We are very envious of what is being provided
for the Constabulary in Northern Ireland. It is an excellent model.
We do not believe that the UDR veterans necessarily need all of
that, but quite a lot of the components within that programme
we believe the forgotten group of security force people, the Ulster
Defence Regiment veterans, need as well.
Q599 Chairman: Do you happen to know
who funds that?
Commodore Elliot: I believe it
is funded by the Northern Ireland Office. There has been a two
to three year rolling programme. I heard the other day that they
have permanent funding now.
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