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Veterans UK Annual Conference
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VETERANS UK ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2008
The Government Veterans Programme: update - Maj Gen Matthew Sykes, Defence
Services Secretary
• Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the eighth Veterans UK
Annual Conference, I am Major General Matthew Sykes. As the Defence Services
Secretary, I am the MOD officer with responsibility for the policy underpinning
the Governments
Veterans Programme.
•
Many of the regular attendees amongst you will know this event by its former
title, the ‘Veterans Plenary’. I shan’t go into the whys
and wherefores behind the change of name, but I would like to reassure
you that the purpose and the broad format of the event remain unchanged.
• As has become customary at these events, I shall spend the next few minutes
looking back over the last 12 months and highlighting some of the progress
that has been made with the Veterans Programme.
• I shall then make way for the Minister who will speak about some of the
initiatives that the Government has in hand for the future.
•
It has certainly been a busy year and, being new to the post of Defence Services
Secretary, one that has opened my eyes to the range of issues that affect
veterans. Indeed it seems that you only have to pick up a daily newspaper
to read an article about veterans – not all as accurate as we would
wish, but some usefully drawing attention to important issues. Personally
I take the public debate in the media as a healthy sign. As they say there
is only one thing worse than bad publicity, and that is
no publicity!
•
Ensuring the proper recognition of veterans and the country’s debt
to them is a key pillar of our work. 2007 saw the marking of the nation’s
second annual Veterans Day with the National event taking place in Birmingham
and a large number of other community events taking place across the UK.
I am sure that many of you here today were involved in although I hope
that
you were drier than those who visited the London event at the Old
Royal Naval College, Greenwich. But it is testimony to the qualities we celebrate
that this did little to dampen the spirits of those who were brave enough
to venture out.
•
One aspect of Veterans Day events which we have been keen to encourage
is the presentation of the Veterans Badge. These badges, which we encourage
veterans to wear at all times, have continued to prove a popular means
of raising the profile of veterans in the community. Similarly, presentation
ceremonies are an excellent opportunity for the Department and others to
demonstrate
publicly their appreciation of veterans. In September last year the Minister
was joined by Lord Healey, the very first Veterans Badge recipient, and
a diverse group of veterans aboard
HMS BELFAST on the Thames for a ceremony to present the 500,000th badge.
This was a significant landmark in the badge’s history and a hugely
enjoyable day for all attending. I am pleased to say that the popularity
of these badges continues to grow and we have now issued in excess of 560,000.
With over four and a half million veteran out there somewhere, we still
have a little way to go. Everyone who leaves the Armed forces is now issued
with a badge so I hope we will seem many more of them out there on parade.
Looking around this
room I see that some of you have forgotten to pin yours on today!
• This is just one aspect of Recognition and I am sure the Minister will
say something more about this shortly.
•
I am also pleased to be able to confirm that, despite tight financial
restrictions within the Department, the Veterans Challenge Fund continues to
attract substantial
resources to allow the MOD to provide pump priming for projects that support
the three pillars of the Veterans Strategy - Transition, Support and Recognition.
The underlying intention is to support initiatives that will take the Veterans
Programme
in new directions, or into areas that are not possible as part
of currently funded activities. It is important that these should not be
just big national headline-grabbing initiatives but also much more modest projects
that help small groups of
veterans to mark their identities or change the prospects of deeply troubled
groups in their local communities. Projects supported this financial year
include:
• the Erskine Schools Pack which offers young people the opportunity to
learn about importance of veterans and the support that they need;
•money to support the Poppy Scotland and Glasgow Consortium of Citizen
Advice Bureaux in undertaking a pilot project in Glasgow to meet the advice needs
of veterans;
• financial support for Project Compass to fund the initial costs of a
Client Support Officer;
•
and support for an Oswald Stoll project designed to get former rough-sleepers
back into employment. Further information on the Fund is available from
the staff at Veterans Challenge Fund stand at the side of the auditorium – together
with application forms should you have a project that might be eligible.
•
As you will be able to see from today’s programme, a core theme running
through the day is that of rehabilitation. This is a term which can cover
everything from recovery from physical injury and tackling mental health
problems to social rehabilitation on return
to civilian life. You will hear more about these issues later but I would
like to stress here that this is not just a matter of what the MOD delivers.
It is very
much a collaborative effort between central and local government and the
Third Sector - organisations just like the ones that many of you represent.
I firmly believe that this increasingly joined-up approach is paying dividends
and that this is borne out by developments over the past 12 months.
•
Let me say – and I expect that the Minister will repeat this – that
those with problems are important to us but they are a minority. For most,
service is a positive experience. We are working hard, nevertheless, to
address the problems of the minority such as those who have taken to life
on the streets. Often these problems are the same as for the general civilian
population – broken
relationships, losing a job, leaving prison, mental illness, alcohol dependence – and
most often a complex combination of a number of these. For just this reason,
solutions are not simple or quick.
•
The Minister will speak specifically later about research we are supporting
in this field. For my part, I would like to highlight some of our current
initiatives. In particular, having established that Early Service Leavers
are particularly at risk of unemployment, we are working with the Department
of Work and
Pensions to track their employment status 6 months after discharge to see
whether
they are at particular risk of social exclusion. The evidence so far suggests
that, if account is taken of the fact that a significant number will return
to full-time education, then employment
levels are not out of line with what would be expected for the population
more widely.
•
We also have practical measures in place. Project Compass, of which many
of you will be aware, is a scheme established with the Royal British Legion
and Oswald Stoll to help homeless Veterans
return to gainful employment. A very successful fund raising event was
held on HMS ALBION a few months ago, although corporate support isn’t
just about money. The work placements offered by a city firm like Freshfields,
for example, or Chelsea
Football
Club represent real opportunities and the chance of an exciting fresh new
start for unemployed veterans. This initiative has placed some 250 vulnerable
veterans in London and the next step is to consider whether we should be
seeking to roll it out more
widely across the country.
•
We are also continuing to work closely with the English Churches Housing
Group and the Department for Communities and Local Government to offer
support and accommodation. Building on the success of the Galleries Project which
provides 13 units of short term accommodation for veterans in North Yorkshire,
we have recently
opened a new supported housing project in Aldershot. The project, Mike
Jackson House, named after the former Chief of the General Staff, is built
on land gifted by the MOD, capital grants from the Department
for Communities and Local Government, and funding and support from Service
charities and Local Government. The project, which provides 25 self-contained
flats, is about more than just accommodation. Dedicated staff will work
with each individual to help
them gain the skills required for independent living, including finding
them permanent accommodation and a job when they are ready to move on.
•
In order to ensure that those few veterans who unfortunately find themselves
in prison are aware of support available, we have been actively pursuing
a Prison In-Reach initiative. I am pleased that prison staff can now access
the SPVA website on their intranet and that the welfare officers of ex-Service
organisations are
better able to gain the ready access they need to undertake casework. Prison
In-Reach now extends beyond England and Wales to Scotland and Northern Ireland.
For the future, we have plans to survey accurately the ex-Service prison
population
across UK. We have also offered the services of our veterans mental health
consultant for those cases where the normal mental health professional wants
advice
on a possible link to service and what that may mean for treatment.
•
Last year witnessed some significant developments in the field of veterans’ health.
The Medical Assessment Programme based at St Thomas’ Hospital in
London and headed up by Dr Ian Palmer, was extended to provide expert mental
health advice to all veterans who had served since 1982. This is helping
to provide expert advice for areas of the country not covered by the mental
health pilots that the Minister will be covering shortly.
•
Let me finally say something about our health monitoring arrangements.
A major issue in the past has been that health problems arising from operational
exposures have only been identified late in the day – often when
conditions are more difficult to treat. For this reason, we have since
2003 had in place independent research to monitor the health and social
outcomes for those deployed on major operations – comparing
them both with personnel who did not deploy and with the position for the
population as a whole. This work is being undertaken by the world-respected
team at Kings College London. It has already proven its worth. Crucially,
it has not found any particular problem of the sort found among veterans
of the 1990/91 Gulf Conflict; equally, it has shown that levels
of mental illness are not generally higher among those deployed. On the
other hand, it has usefully indicated an issue with higher levels of mental
illness among reservists; we have moved to address this quickly
with a special Reservist Mental Health Programme offering assessment and
treatment by Service therapists. Similarly, it has usefully confirmed the
value of our current guidelines about the length of time that individuals
should be deployed on high intensity
operations. Of course, it is still in many ways early days to understand
the full effects of current operational exposures and, accordingly, we
have extended the
research to 2009, taking in Afghanistan as well as Iraq.
• You will appreciate that I have only touched on a few of the initiatives
currently underway. You can seek clarification on any points where you
would like more detail at question time later.
•
I would like to close where I started by saying that, despite the plethora
of articles appearing in the media, I am conscious that many Veterans are
not aware of all the support and practical help that is available to them.
The
Service Personnel and Veterans Agency under the “Veterans UK” brand
name have been running regional awareness campaigns, with media advertising,
poster campaigns and mobile information units.So far they’ve visited
the Midlands and Northeast, and this month they visit Devon and Cornwall.
We all have an important part to play in spreading the word and I would
urge
you to take the opportunities to spread the message about the range
of support available. If you would like advice on how best to do that please
speak to one of the team here today or contact the Veterans Policy Unit
who will be pleased
to help.
• Thank you for listening to me. I will now hand over to the Veterans Minister
