Our military partner, Female Veterans Alliance, has released a report, Female Veterans: The forgotten and invisible servicewomen of our Armed Forces, containing commentary and recommendations from a female veteran’s workshop held last year.
The report offers valuable insight into the multifaceted challenges faced by female veterans.
We’ve identified key concerns voiced by the female veteran community and are publishing a series of blogs to provide advice and guidance.
The workshop was sponsored by Hugh James, as is the report.
Introduction
As part of our blog series in partnership with the Female Veterans Alliance, we look at the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (AFCS) and the issues commonly faced by servicewomen.
Among service personnel the AFCS is commonly viewed as a difficult scheme to navigate and there have been widely documented stories of claimants finding the process adversarial, complex, and unfair. The most recent Quinquennial Review was published last year and the recommendations from that report are currently under consideration. The experiences of servicewomen in particular, though, still remain largely under-investigated.
Francesca Bamsey and Hannah Baker, solicitors in our Military team, attended the second FVA workshop in Wrexham, to facilitate the discussion about servicewomen and the law. While the Veterans Strategy is focused primarily on service personnel remaining law-abiding citizens following discharge, at the workshop we heard that the real issues for service women are centred around accessing legal advice and assistance with the AFCS.
What is the AFCS?
The AFCS is a no-fault compensation scheme that compensates service personnel for injuries or illnesses caused by service on, or after, 6 April 2005. Any injuries or illnesses caused by service before this date are considered under the War Pension Scheme instead. In order to receive compensation, a claimant must prove that their injury or illness was caused or made worse by service. They must also show that they meet a set ‘descriptor’, as set out in the legislation. Each descriptor is linked to a Tariff Level of between 1 and 15, with Tariff Level 1 compensating for the most serious injuries, and Tariff Level 15 compensating for the least serious. A Guaranteed Income Payment is also paid for life, for injuries assessed at Tariffs 1 – 11.
What can servicewomen claim for?
One of the key issues we heard at the workshop was that female veterans often weren’t aware that they could make a claim under the AFCS or War Pension schemes. Since the AFCS was implemented in 2005, just 9% of claims have been brought by women and only 6% of veterans with an ongoing War Pension payment were female.
Servicewomen can claim for any injury or illness they believe was caused by their service or made worse by their service if the injury or illness was pre-existing. The most common claims under the AFCS generally are for musculoskeletal (‘MSK’) injuries. However, there are some injuries that may disproportionately affect female service personnel.
Common injuries affecting female personnel
Studies have shown that pelvic MSK injuries are typically noted in female personnel, due to the physical demands of military training including prolonged marching. Traditionally, shorter soldiers were placed at the back of their training divisions when marching, which can lead to overstriding.
A report conducted by the Ministry of Defence in 2016 concluded that female Army entrants were over ten times more at risk of suffering hip or pelvic stress fractures and over five times more likely to suffer thigh overuse injuries than male entrants. Female Army Officer Cadets were over 18 times more likely to suffer hip or pelvic stress fractures and female RAF trainees were a staggering 48 times more likely to suffer pelvic stress fractures.
Sadly, sexual harassment and assault are still significant concerns for women in the military. Military sexual trauma (‘MST’) can have lasting and profound effects on physical and mental health and can lead to mental injuries such as PTSD.
At the workshop, we sadly also heard the experiences of female veterans who had suffered mental injuries following the treatment they had received either while pregnant, on maternity leave, or upon returning to work after childbirth. The challenges of military life, particularly separation from family while on deployment, frequent relocations and exposure to violence while on operations, can also lead to mental injuries. An MoD report concluded that servicewomen are at a greater risk of medical downgrading due to mental disorders than men – particularly for depressive episodes and adjustment disorders.
Impact on reproductive health is also a concern. The lack of ability to maintain energy reserves may impact women more than men, because of the essential role energy plays in supporting and maintaining the female reproductive system. This can reduce hormone levels, which in turn can lead to irregular or missed periods, and lower oestrogen levels can impact bone health. This is an important consideration for women on exercise or deployment, where there may be a lack of adequate nutrition, disrupted eating habits or lack of sleep.
