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Family Support

Introduction

This area of the website is intended to provide general guidance for those who are coping with life’s general 'ups and downs' and who may need a listening ear or a gentle steer in the direction of some expert advice, receipt of which would soon see you safely back on route to 'normal' family life (if there is such a thing!). If you are reading this page and you have specific concerns about housing, finance, health or educational issues, please click on the relevant pages above as these will take you direct to pages that deal specifically with those issues.

For those facing a particular family crisis, this page provides useful links to some outstanding organisations whose very existence is to support you and those in similar circumstances who just need that little bit of extra support and who need a confidential service that can deliver sound advice and practical support where required.

Support Available

It’s almost impossible to summarise on a few pages the sorts of problems that a family may confront and the agencies available to support them. This page seeks to summarise the main agencies available and to guide you towards the most appropriate support agency for you and your family.

One source of support is clearly the on-base welfare support staffs, all of whom can offer confidential and expert advice. You may wish to confide in the padre, the medical officer, the SSAFA Social Work Practitioner, the HIVE Information Officer or a member of the Personnel Management Squadron staff. Flight and Squadron Commanders also have a Line Management responsibility for their subordinates and a duty of care to support them and their families, particularly when the uniformed family member is away from home. So, whilst most serving personnel and their families have a natural and understandable reluctance to approach anyone in the chain of command for help, we do encourage you to at least consider whether they may be best placed to offer the support you need, particularly if your problem has the potential to impact on the Serviceperson’s ability to do his/her primary duty.

RAFCOM

It would be remiss of us if we did not draw your attention to RAFCOM, the RAF Community Support website which is available to all via the Internet and/or Intranet. RAFCOM has over 1,000 pages of useful information and links that cover a vast range of family-related issues. Where possible, we have linked our site to the relevant RAFCOM pages but, if you can’t find what you are looking for here, RAFCOM may well have the answer.

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