Scottish Veterans Fund: impact report

Wellbeing

Total Granted in 2018-19 - £62,880

The nine wellbeing projects in 2018-2019 cover a wide range of activities. Our funding helped support the translation of letters for retired Gurkhas in The Gurkha Centre in Aberdeen and provide a specialist Dementia Nurse Consultant to train staff at Erskine’s care homes. It also supported horticultural therapy, yoga retreats, cooking skills and football coaching qualifications.

Erskine

Erskine is one of Scotland’s leading veterans’ charities. They provide residential care in four homes and applied to the Scottish Veterans Fund to help pay for the employment of a Dementia Nurse Consultant to improve the quality of care they offer. This included increasing the knowledge, skills and expertise of their staff by training them to Enhanced and Expert Level on the Promoting Excellence Framework.

“Our Dementia Nurse Consultant, Janice McAlister, has had a major impact since coming to work at Erskine in 2017. Janice is supporting staff across the organisation, making them more confident and competent practitioners, which of course supports us in reaching our ultimate goal of delivering excellence in care for our residents. The invaluable support of the Scottish Veterans Fund has been key to helping us achieve this goal, enabling us to develop our learning and also share that learning within and beyond Erskine. We are hugely grateful for the financial support received – it really has made a difference to the delivery of care services at Erskine and improved the way in which we can support our veterans and their families.” Derek Barron, Director of Care at Erskine.

Erskine - Grant £15,000

“It was really powerful to take part in the Age Simulation training and walk in our residents’ shoes for a short period of time. It improved my understanding of some of the daily challenges faced by our residents and why they might display certain behaviours. I want to think more about what lies behind some of the distressed and sometimes challenging behaviour we deal with, and learn more about how I can respond and help our residents.”
The view of a member of staff after the training

Support in Mind

The Veterans Community Café is based in the Stafford Centre, on Broughton Street in Edinburgh, and is a project run by Sadaya in partnership with Support in Mind Scotland. The café opens every Wednesday evening from 6-9pm and offers food, chat, Tai Chi and meditation. A grant from the Fund has allowed them to employ a part-time liaison officer who has been able to run and further develop the café.

“What I found right from the beginning was comradeship. Everyone in the group had either served in HM Forces, was currently serving or the spouse of a veteran/serving person. However, apart from the obvious, there was another invisible thread connecting all of us: that of having at one time struggled or currently struggling with our mental health. This was the main reason we were there, to find support with these struggles in the form of mindfulness.”
Lou O’Connell, Mindfulness Retreat attendee

Support in Mind - Grant £14,483