Autumn has kicked off to a busy start for us, in addition to more accreditations and our annual conference, we were delighted to support NHS England in signing the Armed Forces Covenant. The signing took place at the prestigious Royal Hospital Chelsea in which Professor Tim Briggs CBE, Team Leader Guy Benson and communications lead Kate joined Amanda Pritchard, Kate Davies CBE and the Surgeon General, Major General Philip McNee KHP. This is a significant commitment from NHS England both as an employer and a commissioner of services.
New accreditations
An outstanding 98% of NHS trusts in England have accredited as Veteran Aware, bringing the total up to 203. This now includes all NHS trusts in the London region. Additionally, an increasing number of independent providers and hospices have also accredited, many of whom have NHS contracts. Many congratulations to all organisations who have accredited this autumn:
NHS trusts
- Homerton Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
- Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Independents and hospices
- North Devon Hospice
- The Kirkwood Hospice
Annual conference
Our annual conference on 11 September was a great success with almost 300 delegates joining us both in Liverpool and online, this was our best attended conference to date. We had a wide variety of informative presentations from excellent speakers, including from those with lived experience, such as veteran and paralympic gold medalist, Greg Stevenson (left). A big thank you to all our speakers, attendees and exhibitors for making the event a success. Presentations from the conference can be viewed on our YouTube channel.
At the conference rehabilitation lead, Linus Cosgrove, gave an update on his work to date including the launch of new resources for both staff and patients. Resources include posters and toolkits to support identification of members of the Armed Forces community and to support veteran rehabilitation and, an in-service training video. If you would like to know more, please email Linus at rnoh.rehab.vcha@nhs.net.
New resources page
Finally, our ‘Resources for the Armed Forces community’ page has been given a makeover. Those of you who took away one of our QR code keyfobs from the conference will now find that the QR code linking to our website links directly to this page.
A choice of posters for organisations, linking directly to this page, will shortly be available. This replaces the previous QR code leaflet, commonly shared at discharge.
