• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Raising awareness amongst British Forces Germany

H

helenamc72

Member
Messages
13
Hi,

I am pretty new to this site but thought that you good folks would be brilliant at giving advice to a newbie who would like to raise awareness of diabetes within the British Forces community here in Germany. My 2yr old daughter was diagnosed about a month ago and I have found a distinct lack of support here in the BFG world. It took the med center almost a month just to get the basic supplies in that we need for our daughter and even then it has been an up hill struggle :x My friend came to see me yesterday who's 15yr old was diagnosed last year with T1 and she said that she felt so alone through all of this that there was no kind of support for parents of diabetic children or for the children themselves.

I would like to increase awareness of the condition and what the symptoms are,if I had not heard an interview with Justin Webb talking about his son Sam and their experiences via BFBS one Sunday night just over a month ago Grace's condition would have been far worse, thank goodness for BFBS carrying BBC 5 Live of a Sunday night! I really hope that you can help me with some advice or pointers in the right direction. Many thanks Helena xx
 
Hi Helena, the first thing that sprung to my mind was,'why don't you form a support group within the community' .Find out just how many diabetics there are there.As well as children maybe there are some of the wives/partners who may also be diabetic as well.Maybe put up a poster in the messes or public areas and see if there is a response.Once you get a few then approach your med.centre to see if you can arrange some sort of group sessions there.
 
How much contact do you have with the German population?
My husband's cousin( Scottish by birth) lives in Germany and has had wonderful care for all the 30 years or so she's been there. She was diagnosed there. I believe she is treated as partially disabled and gets concessions in some places.
You might get help from the German way of doing things.
 
Its many years since I did my last tour in Germany and you can feel very left out, I suppose things havn't changed much :roll: I think your first port of call should be with the MO and then try some support from the Units wives club. I would also write a letter to Soldier magazine as this is widely circulated and you may find many in a similar situation.

At least you have found this site and can ask questions here. It can't be easy for you over there, I hope things improve for you.
 
Thank you so much for all your replies and suggestions. There is a review of children's services going on with BFG at the moment and apparently and they are looking into starting some sort of support group within BFG which is good news. I will ask the consultant when we next go on 5th May if there are any groups in our area on the German net which we could perhaps join (good way to improve my language skills too! :) ) Going to talk with my UWO to see if we can use the facilities in the families office for meetings and then advertise in the Sixth Sense military newspaper here in Germany to see if there are any other people out there who would like to join a support group and take it from there, maybe try BFBS would help too. Any other suggestions about getting info leaflets about Diabetes would be brilliant so I can spread awareness at school and creche about this too, something which would have benefited us greatly. Thanks again. Helena xxxxx
 
Back
Top