Personalised Care Role Society Veterans Event at RAF Waddington

An event report by Alison Smith, Workforce Development Lead, It’s All About People Personalisation Programme

Did you know...

OK, I’m going to start with a few questions. Did you know…

• Lincolnshire has the second highest number of veterans and their families in the whole of England?
• A person only needs to have served one day within the armed forces to be classed as a veteran?
• There are over 100 services that support veterans throughout Lincolnshire?

These are just a handful of the things we learned at the Personalised Care Role Society Veterans Event at RAF Waddington on Thursday 27 February.

Veteran events

Jointly organised by the It’s All About People Personalisation Programme and the Lincolnshire Training Hub, the Personalised Care Role Society Veterans Events were initially set up to support those working in personalised care roles within Primary Care. 

However, we identified that many people in different roles across the system work in a personalised and non-clinical way.

So, we now welcome Community Connectors, Primary Care Network Managers, colleagues from United Lincolnshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Lincolnshire Recovery College who attend alongside Social Prescribing Link Workers, Care Co-ordinators and Health and Wellbeing Coaches. 

Fantastic guest presenters

It was wonderful to hold the event at RAF Waddington and to invite guests from OpCourage, Walking with the Wounded, and the Armed Forces Covenant to talk about what services they provide, and some of the challenges veterans face. 

All three organisations stressed how important it is to ask people whether they have served in the armed forces when offering them support, and that the language used with veterans is key.

They relayed feedback from veterans that urges the health and care system to “work together” for veterans, as this currently isn’t happening. 

The presentations also included several examples veteran lived experience, demonstrating just how important the support we provide can be to veteran wellbeing. 

Veterans Directory of Services

At the start of this article, I mentioned the fact that there are over 100 services that support veterans throughout Lincolnshire. On 16 April, Connect to Support Lincolnshire are publishing a brand new directory listing all of the county’s veteran services.

Visit Connect to Support Lincolnshire’s Veteran Support page.

Parting thoughts

• Everyone who attended the event left not only better able to support veterans themselves, but with a wide range of information, connections and insight to share with colleagues and partners. 
• The great networking discussions that took place really showed that there are there are lots of ideas and commitment to working better together to support the veterans of Lincolnshire. 
• It was also great to hear the Five Foundations of Our Shared Agreement being actively referred to as a key element in the discussions we had today. Through these Foundations we are all working to make the relationship between people and health and care provision in Lincolnshire a better and stronger one, and that’s really exciting.

We’ll be covering veteran support in future It’s All About People Podcasts so look out for those. And if you’re involved in veteran support and would like to record a podcast with us, contact us at lhnt.itsallaboutpeople@nhs.net ​

The Personalised Care Role Society

The Personalised Care Role Society was launched in November 2022 as a collaborative project between Lincolnshire Training Hub and the It’s All About People Personalisation Programme.

The society brings together care coordinators, social prescribing link workers and health and wellbeing coaches from across Lincolnshire for teaching, networking and peer support.

Events alternate between face to face and online and typically take place every couple of months.