Overview
Survey:
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The annual Families Survey is about to hit the streets and it’s more important than ever that as many families as possible use it to have their say. For those people who haven’t seen it, the survey is run by the RAF’s Occupational Psychology team on behalf of the Personnel Policy organisation and is designed to capture opinions and concerns on a range of issues impacting on families – from housing to childcare, and from employment to medical services. The results are used by the policy teams in HQ AIR to identify where future policy needs to be heading and to act as evidence in driving forward changes. Group Captain Clive Montellier, the RAF’s Community Support policy lead said ’The Survey isn’t a one-off annual exercise, but a continuous process. As this year’s goes out, so last year’s is still being used to point the way for the future. Although we keep a lot of it the same – so we can spot trends – we’re also adjusting it to reflect the changing face of the RAF community and make sure it’s relevant to the challenges facing our families’.
Of course, there will be some whose reaction is ’What’s the point? What difference does it make?’. Here are the answers to those and some other questions:
What are you doing as a result of the last survey?
- Re-writing the CS Handbook to focus more on deployment issues.
- RAFCOM has recently undergone an overhaul both in presentation and content, including more up-to-date pages, better navigation through the site, an expansion of the Kids Zone, and on line polls.
- CS staffs have focussed on providing information to families to assist with communication to deployed personnel. (’Hello from Home’ booklet, Kids Activity Book and a series of posters.)
Through our visits to stations, annual conference, briefings and newsletters, we have been promoting the availability of non-public funds to Stns to fund teenage entertainment facilities. Many charities, including the RAF Benevolent Fund, RAFA, RAF Charitable Trust, RAF Central Fund & Nuffield Trust, will consider projects aimed at older children as well as the young. Of the £1M granted to projects in the last 12 months, the following teenage projects have received funding:
- RAF Linton-on-Ouse – Refurbish Stn youth facility - £24k.
- RAF Lyneham – Upgrade youth club - £18k.
- RAF High Wycombe – MUGA and Youth Shelter - £29.9k.
- RAF Cranwell – Refurbish youth club - £34k.
- RAF Leuchars – Grant to create Kids Zone - £5.93k.
- RAF Lyneham – Grant to support Play Park development - £15k.
- RAF Cosford – Youth Shelter - £5.5k.
- RAF Digby – Youth Shelter - £4.8k.
- RAF Honington – Youth Activities Centre - £191k (pending award).
- RAF Leeming – Youth facility - £38.5k.
- RAF Marham – Play park and youth centre - £221k (pending award).
At every level, from specialist desks to the Air Force Board, pressure has been maintained on DE and MHS to improve and sustain the quality of service to occupants of SFA. As a result, the SFA upgrade programme now concentrates on dealing with ’worst first’, rather than those properties most easily upgraded. There has been a major emphasis on improving communication between DE, MHS and their customers, with the new RAF Families Federation playing a major role in providing independent feedback. In addition, the RAF have created 27 Service Community Support Officer posts on stns to assist in ensuring that occupants are better able to use the system and to improve liaison with DE and MHS when things go wrong.
What use are the rest of the questions?
The survey responses build an up-to-date picture of the impact of Service life on families. For instance, we used this and other evidence, such as that from AMP’s Briefing Team and the early approaches to the Families Federation, to tell the Service Personnel Command Paper team what the key issues were for families, confident that we had genuine evidence to back up our assertions. The same is true when we are bidding for charitable assistance for projects; for instance, from your responses, the RAF Benevolent Fund knows just how important childcare facilities are and consequently is committed to improving them further.
How long will it take me to complete?
About 20 minutes. Made even easier with a cup of tea or coffee to hand!
How can I take part?
Please complete the questionnaire and return it to the address on the back of the survey. The more responses we receive, the more accurate our analysis can be and therefore, the better outcome the families receive.
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