How well do councils help soldiers?

Glyn Gaskarth of the Local Government Information Unit is gathering informaton on local services for the armed forces

The Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) in cooperation with the Royal British Legion (RBL) want to know what type of services you provide to the armed forces community in your area. Please answer our Call for Information.

All Conservatives share a respect for Britain’s armed forces. However, all too often service personnel and veterans face problems accessing public services. We want to identify innovative local programmes that provide for the needs of active servicemen, their dependents, veterans and other members of the armed service community.

Particular areas of interest include:

• Do you recognise the unique circumstances of the service community and the difficulties they face in accessing ordinary public services e.g. school provision, child care, council housing, health care etc. How have you responded in your area?
• Do you have a relationship with the armed forces? The recession will severely limit the resources available to both you and the armed forces. Have you explored how you can link with external partners such as the armed forces to serve the service community and save public funds?
• Are you a pilot on the Welfare Pathway Scheme and other relevant existing initiatives aimed at the service community? How are they working? How could they be improved?
• Have you developed ways of integrating the services provided to veterans into your wider provision or do you cater for them separately? What projects are you operating and how are you evaluating these programmes?
• The different needs of veterans and their families. Do you have schemes to tackle homelessness among ex servicemen, fund the provision of home adaption’s for disabled veterans etc How are service personnel treated within the NHS and social services in your area and are these two services formally linked?
• How are you including veterans, their dependents and the armed forces in your joint strategic needs assessment? Do you have plans to update your assessment in view of the coalition plans to give local authority’s greater responsibility for public health?

This list is not exhaustive. If you run a relevant programme, which is not listed above, then please do still submit it. Our hope is to highlight the great work taking place. We also want to identify any gaps in provision and develop solutions. We will then publish a guide on how to provide for the service community in your area. This will feature some of the projects submitted in response to the call for information (among
others).

The deadline for responses is Friday 17 September 2010 at 16.00. Please respond here and do make sure to use the written information form provided to enable us to easily collate the responses. Thanks for your support.