Final evaluation Netherlands participation in ISAF 2006 - 2010

of the Reintegration Services Centre. The welfare desk of the GeneralPension Fund for Public Employees mainly provides assistance regardingquestions and concerns of military war and service victims in the materialdomain. It has been established that the organisational set-up of aftercarefor military war and service victims functions satisfactorily, and thataccessibility and awareness regarding the welfare desk is sufficient. Thethreshold for (former) personnel to approach the relevant organisationswith a care question or concern is low. This applies to active servicemembers as well as to veterans and military war and service victims of theUruzgan mission. Retaining and strengthening the current low-thresholdcare system will enable timely recognition and treatment of complaints,some of which only manifest themselves several years after thedeployment.Individual care is customised and both care providers and careorganisations have therefore had to deviate from existing procedures insome cases. It is important that these changes are eventually incorporatedinto existing regulations and that the latter are adapted where necessary.Registration of data and making available information also deservespermanent attention.Finally, it can be said that the mutual coordination between care providersand organisations is important and can still be improved further. Becausethe provision of aftercare is accommodated in many different places in theorganisation, there is a need for a comprehensive concept of care whichintegrates all procedures, enabling aftercare to become even better. Theprocess of aftercare can be optimised in the coming years. For this effort,the input from the Inspector-General of the Armed Forces and from theInspector of Military Health Care will be used.5.3.2 Financial aspects of care and aftercareThe past years have shown that it is impossible to link the expenditure forcare provision directly to specific deployments because of the permanentnature of the care the Defence organisation provides to active and formerservice members and the fact that care constitutes a permanent element ofday-to-day management. For this reason, no separate accounts forpersonnel care and health care are kept during operational deployment. Inaddition, care is in some cases provided over very long periods of time anda need for care may manifest itself at a very late stage, making it difficultto determine to which specific mission that particular need relates.In 2008, in retrospect and on the basis of assumptions and estimates, aneffort was made to gain a clear insight into the amounts spent on care andaftercare for military personnel deployed to Afghanistan. Following from theaccount of expenditure on the ISAF mission and with a view to the futureplanning and accountability of expenditure on care and aftercare, an effortwas made to develop a methodology that will be applicable to missions ingeneral. Using tariffs, part of the mission-related expenditure on care andaftercare can thus be made transparent. These tariffs have beenestablished on the basis of facts and experience and concern the extraexpenditure for care arising from a deployment, which can be linked directlyto the deployed personnel. As a principle, ‘care’ was understood to meanmedical care in deployment areas, and, in the Netherlands, treatment ofphysical and mental injury, (extra) vaccination, medical examinations priorto deployment, post-deployment adjustment, aftercare questionnaires andreturn interviews. This tariff was calculated at EUR 410. This amountincludes the mission-specific vaccination, the medical examination prior todeployment, the aftercare questionnaire, the return interview conducted byPage 92 of 133