Support Group for Families of Injured Personnel (FISP) Injured sesrviceman Andrew Allen in a wheelchair

The SSAFA Forces help, support group for the families of injured service personnel is a group set up by a group of Families members whose relatives have been injured in service.

The support group is a tri-service group that meets regularly and provides an opportunity for families to meet and share experiences, information advice and mutual support. The group is open to parents, Grandparents, siblings. Step –parents, partners. Or indeed anyone who is part of the family unit and feels they would benefit from the group.

 We provide training to families, who are offering support to others.
We are a dynamic and evolving group and we welcome everyone’s ideas and views.

We hope via mutual support to resolve some of the difficulties families may face after their loved one have been injured. We hold regular forum meetings, where any issues are raised via the SSAFA-FH Chain of command, SSAFA-FH will pay travel and accommodation costs for families attending the meetings. We acknowledge that everyone copes with injury and trauma in different ways, but sometimes it helps to talk and share feelings together and with others who know how you feel and has been through a similar experience themselves.

Injured serviceman Steve Shine sitting on his bed

Being told that a loved one has been seriously injured while deployed is devastating and the following hours pass like days as families wait by the phone for information. Once casualties are stabilized and evacuated back to the UK, there can be weeks of treatment and then the long, slow process of rehabilitation. As the mother of an injured Serviceman, Frances Shine knows first hand the confusion and loneliness of the situation and is now
Using her experiences to help others…

Frances’s son, Stephen, was in Iraq serving with the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment in 2007 when she was told that he had been hurt. It was 2am. The casualty visiting officers told her that there had been an explosion and that her son was critically injured but it was seven long hours before she heard that he would be okay. Frances spent seven weeks at Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham, at her son’s bedside. The then Defence Secretary Des Brown was visiting the hospital while she was there.

‘I told him what I had been through and that it would have been really useful to
have other families to talk with who had been through the experience,’ said Frances. ‘He agreed that often families were not given the support they needed and put me in touch with the charity SSAFA Forces Help’ .

Frances and another mother, Gilly Wiggins, worked with SSAFA to establish a more formal system for ensuring that families, including parents and partners, were cared for and that there were people to talk to who would understand them. The Support Group for Families of Injured Service Personnel has gone from strength to strength.

Frances & Stephen Shine‘We hold meetings regularly and talk through our experiences together’, said Frances. ‘We certainly don’t have all the answers but we can help – if we feel that there is something that the MOD is doing that could be improved, we can put it forward for consideration. It is easy for someone who has not been through this to try and say the right things but you need to experience the confusion for yourself to really understand. But
there is a light at the end of the tunnel and things do get better.’

A separate Support Group operates for bereaved families and friends and a new group for young adult siblings has also been established.

Despite having lost a leg, Stephen has recovered well. He returned to his regiment in January 2008 and has since deployed to Afghanistan in a non-combat role. For further information on the groups, contact Jane Barnes at SSAFA on 020 7463 9234 or email jane.b@ssafa.org.uk. Help is also available through the Confidential Support Line on 0800 731 4880.