The Forces Employment Charity: supporting Armed Forces families
Posted in Views by Vanessa Pereira, Forces Employment Charity
The Forces Employment Charity helps individuals from the Armed Forces community find meaningful employment. The charity offers expert career advice, access to training, and tailored guidance to Service leavers, veterans, reservists, and their families.
Support for young people from Armed Forces families
Young people from Armed Forces families often face unique challenges that can affect their education and career paths. Due to frequent relocations, sometimes internationally, they may experience disruption to their schooling, changes to their qualifications, and difficulty settling into new environments. These frequent changes can make planning and gaining consistent career advice harder for young people.
In addition to these challenges, many young people in military families experience emotional upheaval when a parent is deployed, which can affect their confidence and well-being. Those outside the Armed Forces community do not always recognise these barriers.
In response, the Forces Employment Charity provides essential support for young people aged 16 to 24. The charity helps them with CV writing, job applications, apprenticeships, training opportunities, and career guidance. To ensure young people can access support no matter where they are, the charity offers virtual work experience and online career sessions. These remote services make it easier for young people, even those who move frequently, to access the help they need.
Support for military spouses and partners
Maintaining a career can be particularly difficult for military spouses and partners. Frequent postings, childcare responsibilities, and career breaks are common challenges. These factors can lead to gaps in employment, which may affect confidence and the ability to return to the workforce. The Forces Employment Charity understands these challenges and offers targeted support to help military spouses and partners find or return to work.
The Charity’s Families team, consisting of spouses and partners with lived experience of military life, provides personalised guidance. Support includes career diagnostics, CV help, job applications, confidence-building, and more. Employment advisors work closely with everyone to understand their unique challenges and create a tailored plan to help them achieve their career ambitions.
Careers support that makes a difference
The Forces Employment Charity focuses on supporting the military community into meaningful and sustainable careers. Through bespoke one-to-one sessions, career advisors help individuals set clear goals, gain new skills, and increase their confidence in their career journey.
The Charity also partners with organisations such as the Armed Forces Education Trust, Amazon, and TikTok Creative Academy, amongst others. These partnerships offer events, workshops, work experience, and employment opportunities that help young people and military spouses gain valuable experience, build skills, and find inspiration.
The Forces Employment Charity helps individuals gain the tools needed to succeed in the civilian employment arena through confidence-building, mentoring, and access to work experience and training.
How to access support
Young people from Armed Forces families (aged 16 to 24) and spouses or partners of serving personnel or veterans can access support from the Forces Employment Charity. The Charity’s services are free, confidential, and tailored to individual needs.
