Welcome to the August issue of the Armed Forces stakeholder brief.
The last month has been an exciting one across the Armed Forces space; after much hard work and with support from our Armed Forces Patient and Public Voice Group, we were pleased to rename the Veterans Trauma Network (VTN), Op RESTORE: The Veterans Physical Health and Wellbeing Service in the lead up to Armed Forces day.
We have also been working with colleagues piloting the single point of contact service for the Armed Forces community and following a period of engagement, this has been renamed Op COMMUNITY: Armed Forces Community Support.
We also welcome Op FORTITUDE, an Office for Veterans' Affairs initiative to end veteran homelessness, and Operation Stirling, an Age UK and Fighting with Pride service to support LGBT+ veterans, into the veteran support field. You can find out more about these initiatives below. We hope that these new services will offer valuable support to veterans of the UK Armed Forces.
With 5 July 2023 marking the 75th birthday of the NHS, we were delighted that in the same week the Veterans Covenant Healthcare Alliance (VCHA) announced that 75% of trusts across England are now Veteran Aware accredited. Thank you to all colleagues from the VCHA and accredited NHS trusts for their dedication to support improved care for the Armed Forces community. Our next brief will be in September, in the meantime, we hope you manage to take some well earned rest this summer.
Please also see our one page overview 'NHS healthcare for the Armed Forces Community'.