‘Focus on social isolation’ say veterans and local organisations in Trust consultation

May 20, 2020

91% of those who took part in our recent local grants consultation agreed that social isolation was a key issue for us to focus on in our future grant making.

The Trust ran an open consultation earlier this year, to help inform our funding programmes for 2020 and beyond. We received our biggest response yet from individuals from the Forces community – 21% of who were veterans – and local organisations, of which, 11% were local authorities.

Using your feedback to shape future funding

Your feedback has already helped shape our new funding programmes, including the Armed Forces Covenant Fund: Force for Change programme – which supersedes the Local Grants programme and will launch in August 2020. This new fund will continue to offer grants of up to £20,000 based on preferences shown in our consultation results.

Mental health, veterans being at higher risk of isolation and support for Armed Forces families were the top three issues that emerged from the responses received, with support particularly needed for veterans of all ages and their carers and Forces families including Service children.

Our Director of Policy, Sonia Howe thanks those who took the time to get involved.

“We are so grateful to everyone who took the time to take part in our consultation. The insights that you’ve given us are incredibly helpful, and we’ll use the information from this consultation to develop the Armed Forces Covenant: Force for Change programme, and other programmes that we’ll be launching later this year.”

Read our consultation findings here.

More on our current funding programmes

Find out about our latest funding programmes here.