Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-82)
MS LIZ
SHELDON, MRS
DAWN MCCAFFERTY
AND MS
JULIE MCCARTHY
25 MARCH 2008
Q80 Linda Gilroy: Do you feel that
there is any satisfactory way of gathering information about that
because clearly small niggles like that can become very big ones?
Mrs McCafferty: We are one of
the ways. The Families' Federation can do that, but I think the
different Services themselves could certainly do some more research
into that to identify the differences. They know the policies,
they are written down, so they should be able to identify them
fairly easily.
Q81 Chairman: You heard what Professor
Strachan and Professor Dandeker said about the ethnic minorities
and recruitment and retention there. Is there anything you would
like to add in respect of ethnic minorities? Do you feel your
organisations represent ethnic minorities well? Is there anything
you would like to add?
Ms McCarthy: I think we try. Very
much like when we were talking about the Reserve and Territorial
Army families, it is actually contacting the families and providing
them with information in a format that is suitable for the audience
as well, and I think the welfare support is there. To some degree,
especially for the Ghurkas with the Ghurka liaison officers, actually
where there are identified and large groups of communities, there
is very good welfare support and in some of the Army regiments
where there are a large number of foreign and Commonwealth troops,
there is very good welfare support, much of it internally from
their own support networks. I think that we need to look more
in terms of the welfare provision at how we standardise it and
provide it in suitable formats for whomever is the audience, so,
whether it is on the Internet so that people can look it up, whether
it is having a Unit Welfare Officer with his door open, whether
it is having liaison officers for each of the nationalities or
for the ethnic origins who are within that regiment or that unit,
I think it is a very difficult answer to have, and to get it right
to suit everybody, it is very difficult, but I do not think at
the moment we have come across any barriers where people are particularly
disadvantaged.
Ms Sheldon: I would agree with
that.
Q82 Chairman: We all know that hugely
important to recruitment and retention in the Armed Forces is
the support that is given by the patch, but, with the rise of
house prices in recent decades and the desire for Armed Forces
people to own their own houses obviously, does the patch still
exist and is there anything that we can do to preserve it?
Mrs McCafferty: It does still
exist. It is being eroded though by policies in terms of, for
example, selling off or handing back to Addington Homes part of
the patch so that it is then sold on for social housing, so you
have actually got mixed estates. The one at Wittering that I am
based at is a mixed estate and it is nowhere near the estate it
was when I was serving. It has just gone downhill so fast and
you can actually see the differences between the different streets,
those that are owned by the social housing landlords and those
that are run by Defence Estates. The communities still exist.
We are putting resources into things like HIVEs (help and information
centres) in the Royal Air Force, Army and Navy where there is
a community focus for those families, and it must continue to
exist because there is always going to be a percentage of people
who, when they first join the Air Force, the Army or Navy and
they actually want to have a home provided by the Service, perhaps
while they are saving up for that first home themselves or they
just want to enjoy the social life of being in the military, there
is going to be a need for houses for them, so I would ask the
MoD to protect the patches that it has and to try and invest in
them, to put money into the playgrounds, put money into the community
centres and support the communities that they have because they
are, as I say, degrading over the years. We talked about Annington
Homes possibly giving up homes, just one or two in a street in
the middle of a military street, and selling off one privately
in the middle of a street and we believe that that will very badly
erode that feeling of community that the military does need.
Ms McCarthy: I think there is
something else happening as well with the introduction of the
housing information centres about 18 months ago. The people there
allocating houses do not have any concept of the unit where perhaps
somebody is posted to. For example, we had a unit going into Thorney
Island recently coming back from Germany and their families were
distributed from Thorney Island right the way round to Gosport
which, on a map, on paper, is not very far, but actually, when
it is one unit with families an hour apart from each other, when
that unit deploys, that is a massive amount. If there is only
one car in the family, that then leaves the spouse at home without
a car to then be able to go out and visit the other families,
and there are huge impacts there as well, so it is not just the
condition of the estates, but it is the dispersal now of units
across various estates and the idea that a 50-mile radius around
where a unit is based is a suitable distance for a family to be
based in a quarter, and it is not. Especially for our younger
families, I think that can have a massive impact on their welfare
and it is at that point that they start needing much, much more
welfare support from people like SSAFA.
Ms Sheldon: In fact, we conversely
are helping people in that situation, so in fact we have a team
of volunteers in that area who are helping to give people lifts,
so this is where the public funding is not there to support people
or people are not thinking through where they locate them to make
sure they keep them all together, and that is where actually charities
and other agencies step in.
Chairman: Thank you all very much indeed
for again a fascinating and extremely helpful evidence session,
we are most grateful, and thank you for the work that your organisations
do as well. Thank you.
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