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The Restoring Our Veterans’ Mental Health project was facilitated between 2020 and 2023 at Navigo Health and Social Care CIC, an NHS mental health provider in North East Lincolnshire.
This report provides findings from a local research project to explore the unmet needs of the local veteran community.
Over 7,000 veterans from a variety of armed forces reside in North East Lincolnshire (NEL). With a large veteran community, it is imperative that their specific needs and the unique challenges they face transitioning to civilian life are considered. It had been recognised that services were not well-versed in the idiosyncratic needs of veterans and that they may not be receiving the best possible care.
Therefore, a research project was conducted to assess the biopsychosocial needs of veterans, focusing specifically on their unmet needs. Fifty-one veterans were interviewed and provided information to paint a picture of local provision and where improvements could be made.
While there are national initiatives for veterans, it was recognised that local services may be able to adapt their processes and enhance their practice to improve the experience of veterans.
Recommendations are provided via the action plan to develop a multi-service approach to restore and improve the quality of support our veterans receive.
Foreword
Approximately 5.5% of the population in North East Lincolnshire are veterans (Office of National Statistics, 2022). Yet, when this project began, access to bespoke mental health services for veterans was challenging.
Anecdotal evidence from service users indicated long waiting times and limited treatment offers, with the potential for referrals to be problematic if these were not limited to the mental health difficulties from armed forces service or adjustment to civilian life.
Indeed, the challenges we recognised in our service users and their feedback of their experiences with us pertained to a broad spectrum of social, physical and psychological needs.
Each year, Navigo Health and Social Care CIC offer all staff and community members the opportunity to influence the direction of Navigo and its local offer. In 2019, we proposed a research project entitled “Restoring Our Veterans’ Mental Health” as a means for us to understand this further – what needs of our veterans are currently unmet? The membership of Navigo voted for this project and funding was provided by the Gardiner Hill
Foundation. From this project, we hoped to devise an action plan.
When we set out on this journey, we were unaware of the hurdles we were to face. After winning the Project of the Year in September 2019, we set out to commence the development of the project in January 2020. We employed a dedicated staff member to lead on the project and set about making links with local services.
As a mental health provider, the care of service users and the availability of our services is at the forefront of our priorities. Therefore, when the Coronavirus pandemic began to affect our services, the project had to take a backseat. Staff allocated to the project were redeployed into other service areas to alleviate staffing pressures and ensure care provision remained at a high standard.
Despite this, we continued to work on the research project in the background and were successful in gaining ethical approval from the Health Research Authority (reference: 20/PR/0187) in September 2020.
The project closed at the end of March 2023, having received an extension in funding.
Here we set out the awaited results of this project and action plan to ensure the needs of our local veterans are met through a multi-service, integrated approach.
Dr Nicola Airey and Professor Zaffer Iqbal