The Hon Bruce Billson MP
Minister for Veterans’ Affairs
Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence
Press Conference – Canberra, Thursday 16 August, 2007, 12:10pm
Subject – Minister announces world-first $13.5 million Vietnam Veterans Family Study

BRUCE BILLSON: Thank you for your interest. Today it's my honour and privilege to announce that the Howard Government will be undertaking a world first piece of research into the impact of war service on the health and welfare of children of Vietnam veterans.  This $13.5 million body of work will be a world first. It's very innovative. It's integrated and takes a holistic approach to examining the health of veterans' families. Our inspiration was initially cause for an examination of the health of children of Vietnam veterans.  A feasibility study identified that there was scope to carry out such work but there were limitations and obstacles to overcome to make sure that that research was as informative and as reliable as it could be.  What was originally proposed to the government was there'd be a three year trial of different survey and statistical methodological options. I wasn't prepared to spend three years examining what tools might be appropriate when we knew that this examination needed to start sooner rather than later.  Accordingly we put to one side but pushed off from that original work to say what is needed to carry out this examination in a more timely way and a more comprehensive way. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs engaged the Centre for Military and Veterans Health and I'm joined today by Professor Niki Ellis. Her team have done an extraordinary job. What I'm announcing is that this work will commence and already be producing results for the Department, the veterans' community and those people interested in the welfare and the wellbeing of families of those serving those country. We will have initial results before the pilot study proposal that we originally had would have been completed. So we are getting demonstrable results earlier. This will be a world class piece of work. It will again place Australia at the forefront of analysis and insights into this area and I commend it to you all. What we're also doing is moving beyond studying the wellbeing of families of Vietnam veterans, as part of this $13.5 million commitment we'll be examining the experience and welfare and wellness of veterans from East Timor. One of the issues that we do need to address is the time lag between service in Vietnam and doing this kind of analysis today. We think that work is very important and a high priority but we're also keen to make sure that the lessons learnt and the insights gained can be applied in a contemporary context and that's why we're also involving the examination of East Timor families. Just to run through what we're doing, there will be qualitative research where we'll engage with the families about their observation, their experiences. This is work that wasn't originally foreshadowed in the feasibility study. We won't be just limiting our examination to the children. We will be examining the whole family. The veteran themselves, spouses, children and where perhaps a grandchild is part of that family unit, that will also be part of our work. We will be examining all three services. The original proposal from the feasibility study was to examine army only. I felt that was inadequate because we've already seen from other health studies that veterans who served in the air force and the navy in some cases have different health status and outcomes that may have implications for their children. That's why we're examining all three services. The population that will be involved is some 200,000 people. These will be the veterans themselves and of course their spouses and families. We will be able to examine the potential impact and the control groups that address military and genetic effects. We will also be developing a picture that's not only about their clinical status in terms of mental and physical health but we'll be looking at their social circumstances, their resilience and protective factors. What insights have we gained for families that may have experienced some difficulties but worked through that? What can we learn from that? How can we share those learnings with other people that may be experiencing difficulties. Also the family dynamics. A clinical analysis alone might say that a son or daughter of a Vietnam veteran is clinically well. But if they're disconnected from their family, that's something that is of concern to us and we therefore need to extend beyond the simple mental and physical clinical analysis. We anticipate to have actionable information by 2009 compared to the feasibility study which would have had usable material available at 2016. So we're vastly accelerating this examination and, as I mentioned earlier, this method provides the template and the tools to enable similar studies to be carried out for more recent deployments. The funding commitment that I'm announcing today sees the Vietnam veteran families as the first cab off the rack followed by East Timor. The East Timor experience is something we're keen to examine as well and then we can look at other insights we've gained from more recent deployments where we've learned a lot once again from the experience of the Vietnam veteran community. I've consulted with ex-service organisations in the development of this work. Niki and her remarkable team at the Centre for Military and Veterans Health have engaged directly with veterans themselves and got a multi-disciplinary team of some of the nation's finest clinical experts to examine this broader, whole family approach to the experience of Vietnam veterans and their families: $13.5 million will fully fund the Vietnam veteran family study as well as the East Timor family study. This is a remarkable day where Australia is doing world class, world first research of this kind and it will be of great interest to many nations that, like Australia, are very committed to supporting our veterans, our military families and to understand the impact of their service to our country on themselves and those near and dear to them. Professor, would you like to add any observations?

NIKI ELLIS: Yes well I guess I would just like to add that we did an extensive literature review as a part of the work that we did for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and in that we found that there is quite a lot of knowledge now about the impact of military service on family life but we don't really have much detail on how that happens. We know that there's a mental health effect that affects family dynamics but we don't really know the details of how that occurs. We suspect it's via relationships and we certainly don't know much about how that then impacts on the physical, mental and social wellbeing of the children. We see this as a very important opportunity to progress knowledge in these areas. Very important for the military and veterans sector but this is an emerging area of research for other sectors as well.

BRUCE BILLSON: So the important thing with this announcement today is that it will greatly bring forward actionable, usable insights into this very important section of our community. We will be able to ensure that our services and support respond to these insights and those insights will begin coming to us some five or six years earlier than was originally anticipated. This is a far more comprehensive body of work. It's taking a whole family approach and recognising that the clinical wellness of sons and daughters is very important. But in terms of their quality of life, their wellness generally, a broader analysis is what's required and that's what is being carried out here. It also recognises that individuals aren't an island. They are engaged in family units and the success of the family, the family dynamics and also some of the positive experiences that have been shared with us. Many veterans talk about their experience as a very positive thing. We need to understand and get behind those stories and identify what gives some veterans a very positive account of their service and the impact on themselves and their families versus others that convey to us very sincere concerns about the impact of their service on their families. The veterans will be key allies in this. We will be approaching Vietnam veterans to help us make contact with their families. So that will also be an important tonic for the Vietnam veterans who are very keen to be very positive and constructive contributors to that work. It will produce world class, leading insights that I'm sure will be of great interest well beyond the shores of Australia.

QUESTION: Am I correct in understanding the sort of genesis of this goes back for a number of years to some of the earlier Vietnam veteran health studies where it pointed to an effect on families but without any clear understanding what it was?

BRUCE BILLSON: That's right. This is an evolution of work that's been going on for some time. We recognise that the experience of our Vietnam veterans and the way the nation responded to their outstanding service was unsatisfactory at the time of their return. That's had some profound impacts on a number of the veterans as well we more clinical consequences that the Department of Veterans’ Affairs seeks to address and respond to. Recent research has identified that there are some physical ailments that are in greater incidence amongst children of Vietnam veterans. Cleft pallet and spina bifida, as an example. They are well known but we think we need to go beyond that. Some of the family dynamic issues. The way people feel that their support network within their family has been affected by the impact of military service in Vietnam on their fathers in the vast majority of cases, that that has had some implications as well. We want to support our veterans community. We understand that service can impact on the families and we need to gain new insights into what we can do to build the coping, resilience and protective factors where there are concerns that may arise. How to equip people to cope well with that. But also to capture and share insights of how people have had a positive experience, how they've worked through issues that may have emerged and also where the Department of Veterans' Affairs can enhance its service delivery and support. That's an ongoing commitment and this is evidence of us wanting to gain world class insights into how we can improve our support as well.

QUESTION: You mentioned a total of 200,000. Would you be trying to talk to all of them or just picking randomised …?

BRUCE BILLSON: Well there's several phases of it. There will be some random identification to make sure that statistical sampling disciplines are applied. There will also be qualitative - this is a key issue. The quantitative research is important and that gives you dry, clinical material to work with. We're wanting to go beyond that and get some qualitative insights. What have the people's journeys been like? What challenges have they addressed and confronted and, in many cases, overcome? What can we learn from that? So there's several phases of that and I might ask Professor Ellis to elaborate on that if I may.

NIKI ELLIS: Yes and just adding to the question that you asked, we will be starting with the nominal roll for the Vietnam veterans and then seeking to reach the families through the veterans. We thought it was important to design a tiered approach so that you could - rather than waiting for a huge study to complete and have very definitive results at the end, if we broke that up into stages, it would be possible to have information that was released earlier and, in fact, I think the timelines that have been set by DVA is preliminary results as early as 2009 for example. The idea is to do qualitative research as well as the quantitative research. This is an important extension really from previous work that has been done and the qualitative research will enable exploration factors that are more difficult to explore with the quantitative research. So it will explore the experience. It will explore the family dynamics. It will explore what helped people. It will enable us to ask the veterans what they think might help them in the future. If they had their time again, what might have helped them. So that would assist DVA, for example, in future service development. So from the Centre from Military and Veterans' Health point of view, we're a new national centre with core funding from DVA, but a part of our mission is very much research which will assist innovative solutions. So we, like DVA in designing the methodology, were concerned to make sure that the results could feed into policy and program development.

QUESTION: East Timor, for instance, there's been some suggestion that some alarming number of people recording PTSD. Is that reflected in the actual experience of the Department?

BRUCE BILLSON: There have been a number of cases of PTSD. There are aspects of East Timor service that were profoundly traumatic for some that served. There'sbeen some rather inaccurate accounts of the numbers involved. What we do know is that aspects of East Timor engagement were profoundly traumatic. We've seen consequences of that and we're providing a comprehensive range of support there. But some of the commentary has been somewhat overstated about that. Notwithstanding that though, that is a more recent military engagement. One of the issues we've sought to overcome is that we're talking about an experience, in some cases, four decades ago. That's very important for us to gain as many insights as we can but the more recent engagements where things have changed or evolved, we're keen to tap into that experience as well and that's why we're going about both the Vietnam veteran family study and the East Timor family study.  All done? Good. Thank you gentlemen for your interest today. Thanks Professor.