Free NHS Treatment

There are many drawbacks to leaving the UK to serve in mission overseas but the benefits DEFINITELY outweigh the negatives. However we tend not to focus on those negatives but every once in a while it's worth drawing attention to them. Some of the biggest drawbacks are unsurprisingly financial.

Overseas mission partners lose all entitlements to Govt assistance such as child benefit and NHS treatment. Ordinarily in the working ex-pat world these things are not issues worth discussing as folk are earning well and enjoy good benefit packages.

Meanwhile, back on planet mission things are very different. Most mission organisations now expect mission partners to raise 100% of their support and invariably to make budgets stretch certain things are likely to be sacrificed. We live with that and don't worry or stress as we know that our God is the living God and He never leaves us uncared for. But every now and then such issues are thrown into sharp relief and have to be dealt with, for us Joel's birth was an issue which was graciously dealt with by a sympathetic Christian GP, praise God!

Recently a decent article entitled; "Free NHS Care for Overseas Aid Workers" by Richard Kellow appeared on Oscar about the loss of free NHS treatment with a good personal insight from the author. So here's my point: the article links to the Downing Street website petitions page where there is a petition campaigning to "allow UK citizens who are currently unpaid overseas charity workers to access the NHS".

This would be a huge plus for those serving in mission overseas so please sign the petition.