15 October 2018
New Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust Programme
The £4 million Tackling Serious Stress in Veterans, Families and Carers Programme will support charities and health professionals working together to develop new ways to help veterans in the UK with severe mental-health needs.
The programme, which is funded by the UK Government as part of the enduring Armed Forces Covenant Fund, intends to provide additional resources to fill the gaps in existing statutory provision for those who do not meet the usual criteria for hospitalisation and inpatient treatment, while avoiding an overlap with any of the current mental-health services or statutory support. By doing so it will deliver two of the Armed Forces Covenant’s four core themes – providing non-core healthcare services for veterans, and providing extra support after service for those that need help.
Grants in the region of £300,000-£700,000 are available to fund five project portfolios across the UK that will each be managed by a single lead organisation from the charitable or statutory sectors in collaboration with a number of supporting organisations, which will deliver the funded activities.
Funding can be used for the development of innovative new ideas or to further develop existing ideas that have the potential to offer better support than is currently available. Projects should involve service users, carers and families in their development and delivery and must address at least one of the following identified intervention themes:
- New ways of providing respite care locally that will support veterans to remain connected to their community and will support their carer.
- Pathways of care for addiction treatment.
- Trialling the Recovery (‘transition’) college model.
- Supporting carers and peers where they are experiencing severe stress or other illness, and/or to maintain good mental health and prevent crises.
- Enabling more cost-effective and reliable recovery from addiction and dependency.
- Supporting planned short-term residential services that enhance resilience, prevent relapse/crisis, and enable sustainable long-term purposeful living.
As part of the scheme, all funded portfolios will be expected to participate in an overarching research project, which will explore whether the support that the projects are delivering is better than existing statutory services on offer.
The deadline for applications is 31 December 2018.