Headquarters Joint Force Development
Defence Academy of the UK
Shrivenham
Swindon SN6 8LA
United Kingdom
E-mail: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxx.xx
Ref: FOI2019/07750/07751/07752
Ms Poppy Damon
30 July 2019
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx
Dear Ms Damon,
Thank you for your email of 3 July 2019 in which you request the following information:
“I’m looking for information regarding the bereavement services which are available in your
university or college [Royal College of Defence Studies, Joint Services Command and Staff
College and the Defence College of Management and Technology]. Please could you answer the
following:
1.
Do you offer special provisions for counselling services for students specific to
bereavement? Y/N
2.
Do you offer any support or counselling services for students? Y/N
3.
Do you have an institution wide policy/guidance regarding caring for students following a
bereavement? Y/N
4.
Do your policies or practices exclusively relate to support for students who have lost
parents or does your support factor in other forms of bereavement, such as losing a sibling?
5.
Can you tell me what special provision you have for offering extensions and academic
breaks in study after a bereavement?
6.
How much money did you allocate to counselling and support services for bereavement per
year (Jan 2016-Jan 2019)?
7.
If you feel you would like to offer an opinion, would you say your institution feels you are
offered enough from the Government in order to support students who have experienced
bereavement while studying?”
We are treating your correspondence as a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act
2000 (FOIA). We have now completed a search of our records for the information you requested, and
we can confirm that information within scope of your request is held.
We should begin by explaining that the Royal College of Defence Studies (RCDS), the Joint Services
Command and Staff College and the Defence College of Management and Technology (now the
Technology and Business School) are all colleges within the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom
(DefAc). We are therefore answering in a single response to your three requests.
Because DefAc is a Ministry of Defence establishment you can hopefully appreciate that the
bereavement system is somewhat different to that of a civilian university or college in the way it deals
with death or bereavement. Firstly, all the students are over the age of 18 and are in full time
employment in the Armed Forces or Civil Service. Secondly, the military, by nature of their employment,
are routinely exposed to traumatic events on operations, during training and military exercises but it is
also recognised that off duty incidents can also be traumatic for individuals, including bereavement.
Management of traumatic stress related problems is primarily a chain of command responsibility, with
medical and welfare services in support as required.
Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) is a strategy for providing support to Armed Forces personnel
involved in a traumatic event; a traumatic incident is any event that can be considered to be outside of
an individual’s usual experience, and which has the potential to cause physical, emotional or
psychological harm. It is a chain-of-command function that depends on good leadership and robust
Human Resource management and is supported by specialist medical agencies. It is conducted by
members of the individuals’ peer group in the first instance, rather than by medical or welfare specialists.
The intention is to help individuals use their own coping mechanisms in order to keep them
operationally effective, and to identify if further support is needed.
We will now address each of your questions in turn:
1. No. DefAc has adopted the TRiM model in order to support its personnel, both staff and
students. Please see the attached leaflet that is handed out to personnel after an incident or
a death, that would include family members. It does not employ trained councillors but does
have many bereavement aware individuals who can sign post to the right external agency if
an issue is identified (ie CRUSE). The Academy does have a dedicated Padre on site who is
qualified, and a Welfare Officer, who is a military officer and has a small team in support.
2. As Q1.
3. No, not specific to bereavement and not specific to DefAc. TRiM is Defence wide and
covering all traumatic events.
4. We support an individual who has been involved in a traumatic event including parents,
siblings, friends etc.
5. If they were removed from a course and signed off work for more than 14 days after a
recommendation from the Senior Medical Officer after consultation with a Community
Psychiatric Nurse (CPN), the chain of command would remain responsible for contacting the
individual on a weekly basis and the Medical Officer and CPNs would continue to assess
them. This is called the Wounded Injured Sick Management System.
6. Counselling provision for bereavement is generally provided by the third sector.
7. The FOI Act gives a general right to recorded information held by or on behalf of a public
authority. It does not oblige us to respond to requests for unrecorded opinions or create new
information to fulfil the request.
If you have any queries regarding the content of this letter, please contact this office in the first instance.
Following this, if you wish to complain about the handling of your request, or the content of this
response, you can request an independent internal review by contacting the Information Rights
Compliance team, Ground Floor, MOD Main Building, Whitehall, SW1A 2HB (e-mail
CIO-FOI-
xx@xxx.xxx.xx). Please note that any request for an internal review should be made within 40 working
days of the date of this response.
If you remain dissatisfied following an internal review, you may raise your complaint directly to the
Information Commissioner under the provisions of Section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act. Please
note that the Information Commissioner will not normally investigate your case until the MOD internal
review process has been completed. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at: Information
Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. Further details of
the role and powers of the Information Commissioner can be found on the Commissioner's website at
https://ico.org.uk/. Yours sincerely,
JFD Secretariat
Encl: Defence Academy of the UK Trauma Risk Management (TRIM) Handout.