Why military children matter

There are approximately 100,000 children who have one or both parents serving in the British Armed Forces, including the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force. You might assume that most of these families are living near large military garrisons, but that’s often not the case. The majority are scattered around the country, nestled in civilian communities.

What this means for professionals working with children and young people is that even though you might not work near a large military community, you never know when a military child might cross your desk.

The challenges military children face

While military life can be a great adventure, it can also bring unique challenges. Serving parents can be deployed overseas or spend prolong periods away from home. Lots of military families are also highly mobile, moving home every few years or more. These experiences can understandably impact on military children’s wellbeing and academic attainment. In fact, just over half (51%) of military families worry about the impact of service life on their children.

Amidst all this change and uncertainty, professionals such as teachers, GPs, social workers and health visitors can play a crucial role, particularly when parents might also be struggling to cope with upheaval and disruption at home.

How you can help

Ensuring you support military children effectively needn’t be complicated but it is something our charity passionately believes is relevant to all professionals working with children and young people. We would like every child and youth worker to have a basic understanding of military life. That’s why Little Troopers has recently launched a dedicated area of our website with free information sheets for health and social care professionals.

Secondly, it’s really important that all care touchpoints have a process in place to identify military families from day one. It really is as simple as including a tick-box or question on registration paperwork. Remember to regularly communicate with families and ask for updates about up-and-coming deployments or house moves, as a ‘settled’ family circumstance can quickly change.

For professionals looking to go that extra mile, the biggest difference you can make to a military child is to support them with continuity of care. Every week, I receive emails from desperate parents worried about house moves and the impact it might have on their child’s position on a waiting list or the care they are already receiving. It’s one of the reasons we launched the Little Troopers Therapy programme to offer 1:2:1 therapy for service children as a stop gap for those waiting for NHS support.

If a new service family comes into your care, consider connecting with a child’s previous case worker to smooth their transition into your service. And if you have a family due to move, help prepare thorough paperwork for them to take with them, or connect with the new authority to handover or push through a referral on their behalf. These actions really do make a world of difference to military children and their families.

The final thing for me to ask is that we stop labelling service children as ‘disadvantaged.’ My experience of running a military children’s charity for 13 years has shown me that disadvantage only comes when the right support isn’t in place. If we work together to recognise, understand and support military children through their unique life experiences, then we can ensure they are not let down by the system and can instead be supported to turn those experiences into something positive, and grow into adaptable and resilient adults.

Louise Fetigan is founder of the charity Little Troopers