Living in our Shoes: Understanding the Needs of UK Armed Forces Families
Summary: This review was commissioned by the Ministry of Defence to explore the needs and concerns raised by Armed Forces families, as well as make recommendations for change. The responses to the Call for Evidence were extremely detailed and thoughtful, and concerns about various issues were tempered with positive comments about the exciting experiences and considerable opportunities that military life offers to members of the Armed Forces community. During the analysis of written submissions, face-to-face discussions, and our own observations at military bases, a number of key themes emerged about the challenges experienced by military families today. Across all three Services, the key issues raised were: accommodation, mobility, deployment and the amount of time, Serving personnel spend apart from their families, the impact of Service life on children and young people, the employment and careers of spouses/partners, the health and well-being of Serving personnel and family members and the impact of military life on personal relationships.
Abstract: This research set out to investigate the experiences of ‘grown up’ children from armed forces families, to gather their reflections on childhood and education, and to seek their advice to inform the current armed forces community, policy-makers and practitioners. The Service Children’s Progression Alliance (SCiP) defines a child from an armed forces family as “a person whose parent or carer serves in the Regular Armed Forces, or as a Reservist, or has done at any point during the first 25 years of that person’s life” (SCiP, 2017: para 2) and the Office for Students refers to this definition in their documentation relating to student characteristics (OfS n.d. para 8, see also OfS, 2020: para 11). In this research we use the term ‘grown up’ to indicate individuals over the age of 18 recognised to have reached the legal age of adulthood in the UK. This group of individuals are currently overlooked in research, policy and practice as the focus continues to be on serving members of the armed forces, veterans, and families, including school-aged children.