What to expect from MQ

[curlywurlycremeegg]

All a bit theoretical at the moment, DH is in the regular reserve having left the RE in 2005 after 15 years in. He has missed it like crazy and with a bit of encouragement is now on the path of re enlisting. We never lived in MQ, he was always "married unaccompied" as I needed family support to continue to work with my shift patterns etc. So the only experience I have had of MQs is contac houses. Also things are slightly different now as we have four children and at that time we only had one.

So my questions are what size accomodiation could I expect if I did move with him? We have three sons, 14, 3 and 9 months and one daughter who is 5. We are really lucky at the moment as have plenty of space in our own home, but do need this to some extent as out 14 year old has aspergers syndrome and often struggles to cope with interaction with his younger siblings. Obviously things will differ from posting to posting, but if anyone could give me an idea of what to expect with a family of our size it would reallt help me start planning for the next year.

TIA

madwoman, argghhh, statement wise he has a statement with full time support included for mainstream. We have moved once after he had his statement in place and had no issues, have you found problems with moving statements around LAs? It wasn't something I had anticipated as being a problem so I guess I need to do some more investigating around this issue. DS1 isn't registered with ceas as DH was living in single accomodation so we didn't really require any input for housing/schooling/social help. I will look into this now.
herbietea, your housing needs and adaptations sound great. Bedroom wise it shouldn't be an issue, as long as DS1 has his own room I could manage with anything. The thing that was concerning me was all the contact houses I have been in have been three bed but had a tiny living area, and I could see that being a huge problem with my rowdy children!
luciemule, I loved Waterbeach whenever I visted, Cambridge is a lovely city with great shopping and lots to do with children. I can't remember whereabouts the conatct houses where on the MQ, will have a look at a map and try and work it out, there would have been no room for a pony in the garden though .

Having been in MQs for 9 years, what's a contact house? I'm guessing at Waterbeach though, it would be off camp. Our MQ was on camp and the gardens were huge. They were orignally apple orchards (we had 9 fruit trees in the garden so not good for my wasp phobia!). We had the pony in there for a few weeks and in that time, it managed to make itself a dust bowl on the lawn - eek! The guy had to come round and fill it in after the pony left!

Sound fun, I bet your were charged for it

There are usually 3 or 4 contact houses at each base to allow service personel who are married unaccompanied or are seperated from their partners but still have contac with their children, to rent the propert for a week/weekend to accomodate their dependents and spouse when they travel to visit them. At Waterbeach they were off camp, just across the road, have tried to find a map to see if I could remember what road it was and found the golf course instead which made me laugh....I don't know why. I also rmember the outdoor pool and DH going fishing in the lake on camp (he doesn't even like fishing )!

Nope - we weren't charged for it - they filled it in enough and put grass seed on it. It was okay when we moved. The garden was lumpy anyway!
Yes - realise now what the contact houses are.

i guess it depends where you are posted. in practice most la's will honour statements until they do their own assessments/ review. ultimately it's o'seas that would cause the most problems. in theory germany (sce schools) are fine, also cyprus etc. we are currently in isodet, so have had to relinquish dd2's statement. we will need to reapply from scratch if/ when we go back to uk. some postings are more difficult as a result with additional needs... it took us 7 months after receipt of posting order to get local approval for this posting.

definitely register with ceas, and make sure dh is registered with apc as having a dependent with additional needs.

you might also like to register with the ssafa additional needs advisor and get put onto the the newsletter list. they run a very informative additional needs conference every 2 years, which covers all sorts of advice for serving personnel with family members with additional needs.