Delivering the Military Covenant
The Military Covenant Taskforce, created by the Prime Minister to develop policy ideas to help rebuild the Military Covenant, published its report
recently. The Taskforce has made a number of suggestions, focusing in particular on ways of involving charities, private companies and civil society in supporting Service personnel, veterans and their families. The main recommendations include increasing the recognition of the Armed Forces family through ID cards, options to promote home ownership and education amongst Service personnel, co-ordination of veterans charities and strengthening links between civilians and the military.
Two suggestions, creating an Armed Forces Community Covenant and a Chief of Defence Staff Commendation scheme for individuals and organisations assisting the military conmmunity, are being picked up the by the Government straight away. The Government will provide its response to the detail of the proposals in the Spring of 2011.
back to top Reporting on the Military Covenant
On the same day that the Taskforce’s report was launched the Government published its Armed Forces Bill
. Such a Bill is required for constitutional reasons every five years to enable the continuation of the Armed Forces. This year, however, the Bill also contains measures for the Defence Secretary to present an Armed Forces Covenant report to Parliament every year. This will set out how the Government is supporting our Armed Forces, their families and veterans in key areas such as healthcare, housing and education.
back to top University scholarships for children of Armed Forces casualties
The Government recently announced that children of Service men and women killed on active service since 1990 are now eligible for university scholarships. They also announced the continuation and expansion of a scheme to cover the tuition costs of further education for Service leavers.
back to top Veterans Medical Assistance Programme
The Medical Assessment Programme (MAP) for veterans has added to its capabilities. It was originally set up in 1993 to assess Gulf War veterans and then extended to Porton Down Volunteers and those that served in Iraq or Afganistan. It now provides assessments to those who have been deployed on operations since 1982 and are concerned that they have Service related mental health problem that is not fully understood within the NHS. Any veterans considering attending the MAP should speak to their GP about a referral.
back to top Victory in the first battle of DFGs
You may remember from the previous edition of the newsletter that the Legion, as a member of the Adaptations Consortium, called on the Government to protect the funding of the Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) scheme. The Adaptations Consortium scored a fine success with DFG's funding being one of the few areas of spending that received an inflation linked increase in October’s Comprehensive Spending Review.
With local authorities now drawing up their budgets for next year the Legion's attention will turn to calling on them to ensure they actually use their allocated funding for home adaptations and continue to provide top-up funds from their own resources.
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