‘Anxiety therapy’ for the children of our Armed Forces

But now help is at hand for the military children so often forced to pay the price for Army, Navy and Air Force life. More than 600 military children aged four to 17 are to have therapy sessions with specially trained clinicians made available, following the roll-out of a new scheme by the Little Troopers charity.
Those as young as five will benefit from one-to-one sessions, while teenagers will be able to access local group meetings with their peers.
The initiative – which is receiving National Lottery funding – is the brainchild of the charity’s founder Louise Fetigan, and was borne of her experiences trying to raise a daughter while she and her husband pursued Army careers.
“This has been a long time brewing,” said Louise. “My husband Tony and I joined the Army as teenagers and met while serving with 26 Regiment Royal Artillery in Kosovo.
“They were challenging times. By 2010, when our daughter Madison was seven, we were based in Germany and Tony was on his third Afghanistan tour.
“He had already done three Iraq tours. That’s when we found a heartbreaking letter from Madison about how she was struggling. She’s 19 now and at university, but she went to nine schools and even had to change in the middle of GSCEs.”
While some military children cope, for others the regular cycle of moving home and seeing parents deployed leads to anxiety and a feeling they don’t belong.
Things became so serious for Madison that she applied for therapy on the NHS, only to be told there was an 18-month waiting list. Louise scoured the country for therapists with experience of military families but found “nothing out there for military children to give them context and help them understand deployment, moving schools and being a part of a military family”.
Now the charity is training hundreds of therapists. There are around 100,000 military children in the UK and, while it is normal for families to have two working, busy parents, the challenges of a military life are unique.
“Anyone can deal with a single six-month absence,” said Louise. “The difference here is that deployments are often repeated and sometimes concurrent, and that’s what makes it really difficult. A child can’t pick up the phone after a great day at school and phone Mum or Dad.”
And the challenges don’t stop when soldiers return home. “Parents coming back into their families after a deployment often need to learn how to communicate with them again,” she added.
Regarding her latest venture, she said: “The Lottery has given us £65,000 which is fantastic and will allow us to provide therapy for 600 children over the next two years. But we could do that ten-fold.
“Our hope is the high demand will convince the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust or perhaps even the MoD to consider continuing the funding in two years’ time.”