An organisation established to support military veterans adapt to civilian life has seen its case load from women quadruple during the pandemic, with support now being offered on a global scale through its adoption of technology.
Forward Assist has traditionally supported both male and female former service personnel in and around its native North East, although has made waves nationally through its campaigning work.
However, during the past year, its reach has extended exponentially through its use of virtual sessions, with its engagement with women growing particularly strongly.
Hundreds of women veterans from the UK, Europe and America have reached out for support from Forward Assist, which has a dedicated Salute Her service and was behind the groundbreaking No Man’s Land research project, which highlighted the reality and trauma many women in service face.
The organisation – which brings together the expertise of veteran and former social worker Tony Wright with the clinical mental health experience of Paula Edwards – also campaigns on major issues, including gender-specific mental health support for women who were harassed during their time in the military, as well as military sexual trauma (MST) to be recognised as a specific traumatic event.
And through its technology-based approach, Forward Assist has also engaged with many of the world’s leading experts in veteran support to enable it to continue to develop its offering for the UK’s veteran population, many of whom live with brain injury and psychological trauma.
“For someone who has been through trauma, accessing a support service can come with a lot of anxiety, and accessing them can often be difficult to fit in with a woman’s everyday life. For that reason, you do see quite a high dropout rate in accessing mental health support,” says Paula, women’s veteran lead at Forward Assist.
“But when we took things virtual, they can access the service at any point in the day, they can talk about what they need to talk about in an environment where they feel safe. It fits in with their very busy lifestyle and they can access the service when they feel ready.
“We’re now working with hundreds of women from overseas as well as the UK and while virtual was new to us from March last year, it has meant we are now able to support so many more people.”
The organisation’s commitment to women sees them campaign and advise on a national scale, including to Parliamentary groups directly, to bring about change to benefit current serving personnel, as well as the lives of veterans.
“One of the things that came out of our No Man’s Land research was the extent of the oversights in the military in their treatment of women – it’s a man’s world and they’re trying to change, but they’ve got a long way to go until they come to the point they need to,” says Tony, chief executive and founder of Forward Assist, who was medically discharged from the Royal Marines in 1981.
“As one example, women were never issued with sanitary products, they had to make do with socks or bits of paper – as one of the women said to us, it’s not like in Afghanistan they can just pop to the corner shop. After Paula raised it, the policy was changed.
“We both fed into the Parliamentary Defence Committee enquiry which looked at what happens when someone is raped in an army camp, the commander only has to report it to the military police, who don’t have a great track record in investigating these things. But again, it looks like change is coming and there is going to be collaboration between the military and civilian police.”
Even in the crucial matter of life-saving body armour and equipment, the UK still lags behind elsewhere in the world in catering to their needs, continues Tony.
“Women also have body armour which isn’t shaped for a female body so it doesn’t always fit properly, the helmets are made for a male head, even the rucksacks can cause musculoskeletal problems later in life as they’re made for male bodies,” he says.
“In America, they’re so far ahead of us, they do the little things like making boots in half sizes, there is a huge unmet need. The Americans are so much better at sharing best practice and we have a lot we could learn in the UK.
“During the past few months we’ve had so many meetings with people around the world which has allowed us to tap into area-specific expertise. We’ve made some fantastic collaborations which are going to really have an impact and help our veterans in more ways now than ever before.”
