The people standing beside you

💑 For Partners of Veterans

Living with someone who has PTSD, depression, anger issues, or who has dramatically changed after leaving service is hard. It's exhausting, confusing, and can leave partners feeling isolated and unseen. Your experience matters.

What partners often experience

• Walking on eggshells — managing your own behaviour to avoid triggering a reaction
• Secondary traumatic stress — absorbing trauma through your partner's experiences
• Loneliness — feeling cut off from the person you knew
• Anger and resentment that then causes guilt
• Fear — of their anger, or that they might harm themselves
• Carrying all the responsibility for the household and children

👧 For Children in Military Families

Children in military families experience unique pressures — frequent moves, parental deployment, witnessing parental mental health difficulties. These can have real impacts on development and wellbeing.

• Disrupted schooling from moves can mask learning difficulties or trigger them
• Anxiety and attachment difficulties are more common in children who've experienced parental deployment
• Neurodivergent children may struggle particularly with repeated transitions to new schools and social environments
• Children may internalise or act out parental stress without having language for it

🧩 Neurodivergent Children in Military Families — EHCP Guidance

If your child has or may have SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities), navigating the EHCP system is difficult at the best of times. Military families face extra complications from moves between local authorities.

Requesting an EHCP needs assessment

If your child hasn't been assessed but you believe they have SEND, you can request an EHC needs assessment from your local authority at any time. You don't need school agreement — though it helps. The local authority must respond within 6 weeks and must assess if there's reason to believe the child may have SEND.

Military children and SEND — known challenges

• Schools may attribute difficulties to disruption rather than identifying SEND
• Short time in a school can mean not enough evidence gathered for assessment
• Parents may be dismissed as "anxious" rather than listened to
• Some areas have very long EHCP waiting times — begin early

🧓 For Carers of Veterans

If you provide regular care for a veteran with a physical or mental health condition, you have rights and may be entitled to support.

• Carer's Assessment — your local authority must offer you one. It assesses your own needs as a carer.
• Carer's Allowance — if you provide 35+ hours of care per week and the person you care for receives certain disability benefits
• Carer's Credit — protects your State Pension if caring prevents you from working
• Respite care — short breaks from caring; your Carer's Assessment should identify this
• SSAFA Carer support — SSAFA can support carers of veterans

🔗 Family support organisations