A specialised employment service to advise injured servicemen and women about professional life after the armed forces has been launched.

Hundreds of businesses are offering work placements for troops as part of the Recovery Career Service, which is designed to help wounded personnel adjust to the civilian world.

The Ministry of Defence also announced that the Defence Recovery Capability - a joint initiative with the major military charities Help for Heroes and the British Legion - is now fully operational after being launched in February 2010.

Mark Francois, the minister for defence, personnel, welfare and veterans, made the announcements in front of senior military officials and charity bosses at the Wellington Barracks in central London.

With hundreds of soldiers, airmen and seamen getting injured each year, wounded personnel hailed the programmes for giving them opportunities after they leave the armed forces.

Christopher Church, a former Staff Sergeant with Reme, joined the Army when he was 16. The 31-year-old, from Chatham in Kent, sustained serious injuries when the vehicle he was commanding hit an IED in Afghanistan in 2009.

Now a project engineer at Jaguar Land Rover, Mr Church said: "My plan originally was to have a full career in the Army, but obviously that changed with me getting injured. So I had to then readjust where I needed to go, and the Recovery Career Service enabled me to translate the skills I had got in the Army and make them more marketable for a civilian organisation. It's massively important, because after injured servicemen go through recovery, their lives need to go on. The injury doesn't define them, and it enables them to move on and almost makes them a better person because they can develop their personal skills from it."

Similarly, Sergeant Nathan Blewer sustained damage to his face, a compressed neck and lower back and his right hip was knocked out of alignment when his Warthog armoured vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Helmand Province in 2010.

Sgt Blewer, 31, from Maidstone in Kent, who is still serving with 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, has been given the opportunity to work for the Aston Martin racing team as pit crew on the World Endurance Championships. He found the placement through Mission Motorsport, a forces rehabilitation charity. He said: "I do the fuel on the pit stops, so it's a pretty important job, and we also do the communications, helping set up the radios for the race team of 97 people." Asked about the similarities with his role in the Army, he said: "There's a lot that carries over. The team want to know the similarities and what's different."

Mr Francois said: "It's very important for all of us. This is honouring the covenant in practice. If someone has had the courage to volunteer to wear the Queen's uniform and perhaps to go into harm's way in order to keep the rest of us safe, if that person is wounded in the Queen's service, we have a moral duty to do our best for them, and that's what this programme is designed to deliver. We're really much more joined-up than we were a few years ago. Everybody admits that, and we need to be more joined up because these people who are wounded, injured or sick need the best service we can provide."

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-defence(Ministry of Defence)