Veterans confused by array of support groups

MEMBERS of the armed forces are being let down when they return to civilian life because of a confusing array of voluntary organisations and secrecy surrounding their personal information, campaigners and veterans groups have claimed.

The Howard League for Penal Reform claims in a report published today that veterans are faced with more than 2000 voluntary sector groups that are not always well co-ordinated.

Major Jim Panton, chief executive of the veterans’ charity Erskine, told The Herald that there were probably too many groups to make it easy for a soldier leaving the Army to find the help that he or she needed.

He said what makes it even harder to help veterans is that the Ministry of Defence is not sharing the information they have on those leaving the armed forces with the voluntary sector because of data protection laws.

By the time soldiers do eventually get in touch with the support organisations themselves, the situation has often become critical.

“It’s on the edge of scandalous that the MoD have hidden behind the Data Protection Act for as long as they have,” he said.

Major Panton’s comments came as the Howard League’s own inquiry into former armed service personnel in prison revealed that armed forces personnel leaving the services have to navigate through a long list of voluntary organisations: more than 2100 in England and Wales and about 50 in Scotland.

It also said their research had shown that many veterans commit offences around 10 years after leaving the forces, a long time after the help and support they are offered has ceased.

Director Frances Crook said: “We have found there is a staggering number of charities who work with veterans. While in one sense this is welcome and shows the commitment the public have to supporting veterans’ causes, it does make for a difficult landscape for veterans and service commissioners to navigate.”

Major Panton said the situation was better in Scotland, but it could still be confusing with room for improvement.

He said: “There’s been a lot of talk over the last 10 years about getting help from one place but practically that’s probably very difficult to achieve. In Scotland, it is a lot better than England but there is still a need for co-ordination and co-operation between the charities.

“The culture within the armed forces is that you should not be a burden on your colleagues. As soon as they start to struggle either initially or later, their inherent training is saying: I should fight through this myself.

“Later on, when they start to really struggle, they are very disconnected then from the systems that they would have been told about at the beginning and it becomes a real struggle for them to find their way back into that system.

“The MoD knows where these people are but they’re not sharing it with voluntary organisations and there is absolutely no doubt that if there was a way to track these individuals and the voluntary organisations had access to them, that would be a huge step rather than waiting for them to find out for themselves when it’s almost too late and has reached a critical stage.”

Clive Fairweather, former SAS deputy commander and chief fund raiser for veterans’ mental health charity Combat Stress in Scotland, agreed that there was a need for improvement but he believes the situation is better in Scotland than England.

“In Scotland, the voluntary agencies are much better co-ordinated, and there is help, you’ve just got to cast about a little bit,” he said.

“You will be in a system where people will pass you from one person to the other, but you will get help with housing, making a CV. If you’ve got mental health problems you could end up with Combat Stress.”