New targeted grant awards to explore the impact of Service life on children, and engage with younger Veterans
One of the three key themes under the Trust’s 2024-27 Funding Framework, is understanding complex problems and identifying solutions. In achieving this theme, we will seek to support strategic research or innovative activity that helps us to understand and address complex problems.
Targeted research and support
In 2024/25 we have chosen to award two targeted applications, covering two distinct areas of work.
The first will explore the impacts of Service life on children, other than educational attainment. Northumbria University have been awarded £124,899 for a one-year project exploring this theme. The ‘Military Children – promote, protect, prevent’ project will seek to understand the Social Determinants of Health (Health Care and access, Social Community, Neighbourhood and Environment, Education and Economic Stability) of Military Connected Children and Young People (MCCYP).
The primary aim of the project is to understand the ‘lived’ experience of the Social Determinants of Health (SDH) which surround MCCYP, from the perspectives of the young people. They will co-design three age related SDH surveys (8-12, 13-15, 16-18).
The second aim is to develop an integrated SDH framework to understand what ‘good’ looks like within the context of military service provision and help reduce inequalities within the MCCYP population.
The importance of lived experience
Dr Paul Watson, Lead Researcher for the Military Children – promote, protect, prevent programme at Northumbria University said: “Little is known about how military connected children and young people understand their communities [and] their Social Determinants of Health (…) this project will seek to understand the Social Determinants of Health from the perspective of military connected children and young people and identify how service providers could support [them].
“The project itself is built on the three pillars of public health - promote, protect and prevent - this means that if we can understand the lived experience of military connected children and young people, and truly understand their needs, then we can promote early service intervention, protect their overall health and wellbeing in the hope to prevent poor outcomes for military connected children and young people – be that spiritually, socially, emotionally, physically or educationally.”
Innovation through gaming
The second targeted application supported by the Trust will explore the long-term growth and sustainability of an innovative and modern pathway to support for younger Veterans, through the medium of gaming.
Company of Makers CIC has been awarded £200,000 to support a three-year project that offers activities for younger Veterans across the UK.
Get in the Game (GITG) includes online content and face-to-face events designed to prevent social isolation and loneliness. It builds on the successes and lessons learned from the organisation’s ‘eGaming of Recent Conflicts’ project, which ran from May 2023.The programme will also provide one-to-one support to address wellbeing, mental health, and welfare issues.
Support for young Veterans
The target audience of the programme will be younger, tri-Service Veterans. The programme aims to support their wellbeing and address challenges such as mental health and financial difficulties, while also creating a community of shared interests to improve quality of life.
Speaking about the new programme, Co-founder, Rachel Owen said: “Huge thanks for supporting us, we’re super excited. Younger Veterans are less likely to seek help. They face challenges such as loneliness and social isolation and Get in the Game addresses this.”
This grant will complement existing provision within the sector and help build an innovative and sustainable pathway of support to Veterans.
Understanding complex problems
Our overall outcome for both of these awards will be to have added significantly to the understanding of complex problems so that solutions can be developed, and to have funded innovative solutions that can demonstrate positive outcomes for individuals.
These solicited awards complement our wider suite of open programmes in 2024/25, providing a range of funding opportunities for charities, CICs, local authorities and other statutory organisations, and Armed Forces bases/units.
Find out more
You can find information about all of our open programmes on our programme page, here
For more information about the Get in the Game project, click here