Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the Answer of 30 November 2017 to Question HL3576, what steps his Department is taking to strengthen families.

Our Armed Forces are among the most extraordinarily talented and hard-working people in our society. We recognise the vital role that their families play, and that operational capability relies on recognising the Service person as part of a wider family unit. This is why we launched the first ever UK Armed Forces Families’ Strategy in 2016, which focuses and coordinates activity to support Service families. Priorities for this work include childcare, partner employment and accommodation, which have consistently remained areas of interest for both the Service Families’ Federations and the Department. In delivering the strategy we work closely with a number of external stakeholders to provide support to spouses and partners, for instance to those who are looking to gain employment, as we recognise that the demands of Service life can impact on the careers of family members.

Welfare support is provided to families via the single Service welfare organisations; additionally there are a significant number of other organisations that can be accessed via welfare referrals. The Covenant Fund has assigned £4 million to projects that support ‘Families in Stress’, enabling specialist organisations such as Relate to provide immediate or local support to families experiencing episodes of significant strain. To date the Fund has awarded eleven grants, totalling almost £2 million, to specialist and expert charities.

In addition to keeping the range of welfare support under continual review and launching the Families’ Strategy, we have expanded the Defence People Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2017-2022 to incorporate all Defence People, including the families of Service personnel. We have also embarked on a partnership with the Royal Foundation to deal with issues of stigma and the treatment of mental health problems across the defence community. We are developing options for the Future Accommodation Model which recognise the 21^st century family and we are developing flexible engagements for those who wish to vary their deployability to better fit their Service career around family life, all of which aims to contribute to increased family stability.

A key component of the Families’ Strategy is to ensure that Service families are considered in people policy development, supporting the principles outlined in the Family Test. This is achieved through consideration of the Service family as part of each relevant submission or policy discussion, and through regular engagement with the single Services and the three Families’ Federations who represent the needs and views of Service families. The Department also monitors the development and implementation of policy to assess the impact on families. In the period since August 2014 none of the legislation implemented by the Ministry of Defence has required the application of the Family Test.