Armed Forces

My Lords, I, too, should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, for securing this important debate and I also thank my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham and other noble Lords who have raised the importance of the care and aftercare of service personnel. I declare an interest in that I am a non-executive director of the Order of St John and the British Red Cross Defence Medical Welfare Service. The contribution of the Defence Medical Welfare Service is not well known. Its welfare officers go about their work in a quiet and effective way in hospitals in the United Kingdom, Germany and Cyprus and on deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, we believe that it is far more important that the people who need and use the service, members of the Armed Forces and their dependent relatives, know exactly what DMWS provides. Feedback from them and the commanding officers of those hospitals is overwhelmingly positive. The Defence Medical Welfare Service is a charity contracted and funded by the MoD to provide a medical welfare service to hospitalised personnel and their dependent relatives. The service is held to account by the MoD at quarterly review meetings. We are the only civilian charity that serves on the front line and is accountable to military command while on deployment attached to field hospitals. Before deployment, all welfare officers undergo specialist training and, immediately prior to leaving, join the hospital medical team with which they will be working for last-minute training. While on deployment, they wear a functional uniform that differentiates them from the military and a name badge carrying the logo of St John and the British Red Cross. The money invested by the MoD into DMWS is used in as cost-effective a way as possible and is subject to regular monitoring by the board, the management team and, of course, the MoD. A rigorous performance management framework enables anyone from the board to the welfare officers to see at a glance what activity has taken place in the units. However, what is not seen in those reports, but is seen only in the letters of thanks and appreciation, is how the welfare officers rise on every occasion to meet needs on an individual basis with professionalism, compassion and respect to assist those at a most vulnerable time in their lives. Personnel from other than UK units who are treated by the hospital team are also recipients of DMWS; in fact a letter recently arrived from the head of the army in the Netherlands praising the way in which Dutch personnel had been so well cared for by DMWS welfare officers. Much has been discussed over the last 18 months on the subject of the broader provision of welfare to the Armed Forces—not only the military but also other organisations. However, the service that DMWS provides is different in that it is purely a hospital-based medical welfare service. What do we mean by this? All welfare officers hold a qualification in health and/or welfare, including counselling skills and first aid as basic requirements, as well as being given the opportunity for continuing professional development. They are fully equipped to meet the immediate needs of the sick and injured by providing the basic necessities of clothes and toiletries as well as comforts for those requiring longer stays in the form of CDs and DVDs. They also provide intensive support for the families of the injured. Perhaps the most important part is the listening ear for hospitalised personnel, enabling them to talk in absolute confidence away from but respecting the chain of command. They often want to share their personal worries, anxieties and fears, as well as grief if perhaps they have lost a great chum. There is also an opportunity to pick up on the early signs of mental health conditions, particularly those that lead to PTSD. This can lead to early referral and prophylactic treatment. This listening ear is also available to medical support teams, most often after a very heavy day of casualties and deaths, providing a private space for reflection and the ability to unwind from the stress of the day. This organisation, consisting of a total of 50 staff, provides a small part of the total welfare commitment to service personnel, but we believe that the delivery of medical welfare plays a very important part in providing a professional and compassionate service at times of greatest need and, in so doing, contributes to the well-being of individual service personnel, enabling them to move towards a full recovery and, where possible, to return to service duties. I hope that the Minister, in her winding-up, will be able to give me some information as to when the commitments in the Command Paper published last July will be enacted.