Ms. Mathyssen, I can help you with that.
The female veterans policy forum was an election commitment, and it is an ongoing arrangement. You're right: the first forum was held in December last year. It consisted of about 25 female veterans and 25 female family members of veterans. We ran parallel seminars, and then we brought the two groups together for most of the second day, when they shared their issues.
Both groups identified quite similar concerns: transition was one of the top issues, as it is when we talk to veterans more broadly; the impact that service has on families, what it's like to serve as a female member and the effect that has on their families; the intergenerational experience of mental health and the impact on children; and the rigours of deployment if both parents are serving and deploying, and what happens to children and families in those situations.
They reflected on the difference from the Vietnam veteran era, when usually it was the man who deployed and the spouse stayed at home. The children had the stability of their mother, and also the health of their mother to rely on. In families now, very often female veterans are married to veterans themselves, so families are subject to a situation that challenges both parents. There was quite a lot of focus there, and what that means.
There was focus on veteran suicide and the experience of the women who had participated as mothers, wives, and sisters of people who had taken their own lives, and the impact that had on them.
They also talked about the need to support the family—because if you support the family, you support the veteran—and the critical role families play, as we were talking about before, in seeing what's happening to the veterans before the veterans themselves may notice. Families want to be able to talk directly to DVA and to be heard and respected—not just the veteran, but, very importantly, the family.
Those were the main issues they raised at that first seminar.
We are holding that on an annual basis. The next one will be in October this year. As I said, we have four years' worth of funding to continue to run this forum.
We are looking at other things we can do to support them. For example, one of the members there was involved in writing a book for children with parents who have PTSD. The book is called Do You Still Love Me? Because I Really Love You! We've been involved in purchasing copies of it, which we are distributing through our veterans and veterans' families counselling service as a way of supporting children in those circumstances.
Since then, we've been engaging, individually and collectively, with the women who participated in the forum, bringing some of them in to see the changes we are making and to help inform us of the direction we should go with the services that we offer. We've held particular engagement sessions with female veterans to get a real focus on what the particular challenges for women are.
There has also been an issue around recognition of the service of female veterans and their access to ex-service organizations. Some of them have faced discrimination and unfortunate commentary, when they are wearing their medals at commemoration ceremonies, that they are not wearing their own medals and have them on the wrong side. There are those kinds of questions. Our minister put out a press release highlighting this issue just before Anzac Day, to draw attention to the fact that female veterans deserve the same respect as male veterans, and their service is just as important and valued.
That's kind of the space we are operating in at the moment. We are working to develop ongoing connections and to help them form a network themselves, because we've discovered that most of them don't know one another. They were feeling quite isolated and alone, and the forum really gave them an opportunity to join together and to recognize that they weren't on their own. We've been encouraging the development of that ongoing network.
