A slice of Sennelager

It is little surprise – six years on from the large-scale drawdown of British troops from Germany – that service life in Sennelager is generally more of a ‘scaled back’ affair. Fewer ‘resident’ personnel and...

Going solo with others

DECIDING TO be your own boss and ‘go it alone’ work wise need not be a solitary experience, insists Jess Sands, founder of the military spouses, partners and other halves network Milspo. “We support Armed Fo...

Building belonging behind the wire

BY ANNA HUTCHINSONAFF EDUCATION & CHILDCARE SPECIALIST Sitting ‘behind the wire’ on Blandford Camp, Downlands Community School is a well-established feature of the Army community in Dorset and has certai...

Support with childcare costs

WRAPPING YOUR head around childcare costs can be confusing, particularly given the Ministry of Defence has three elements to the support it extends to working families. While each can be used to meet some of t...

Recollections and role models

By Kayleigh Atherton   GROWING UP as a military child meant learning to adapt quickly. New schools, towns and friends became a regular part of life. I attended 10 different schools and moved house more times...

Back on track

By Claire Borg A POSTING to Kenya gave our family more time together and, with more control over my own diary, allowed me to rediscover a passion I thought I’d left behind. Before the move, our life in the ...

Fantastic foundations

The Defence Housing Strategy 2025 heralds the biggest transformation of Armed Forces accommodation in more than 50 years. It’s a plan about far more than just bricks and mortar and is set to create homes tha...

Raising the standard

There are early signs that the new Consumer Standard for families living in Service Families Accommodation (SFA) is helping to improve lives. When launched, it included a series of commitments and set a dead...

Make yourself at home

Army housing is getting a much-needed makeover, with major investment in accommodation and more freedom for families to enhance the spaces they live in. But how far will you go to make your house feel like a ...

A guide to childcare options

When AFF asked families with children aged 0-5 about their childcare experiences, more than 72 per cent of the 200 who responded said they struggled to find cover for hours they wanted and 62 per cent found i...