Support for Veterans with Service-Related Physical Disabilities
On 12 March 2024, Help for Heroes announced the opening of the Veterans’ Mobility Fund, supporting Veterans in need of high-quality mobility equipment to improve their quality of life. The fund is designed to support Veterans with physical disabilities resulting from illness or injury sustained during Service.
In September 2023, The Office for Veterans’ Affairs (OVA) and the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust awarded administration of the life-changing £2.52m Fund to Help for Heroes, who are working in partnership with Blesma, as part of a highly specialised open grant programme that will help Veterans with physical disabilities via an externally delegated grant scheme. The Fund will remain open and support Veterans across five years.
As always with the Trust’s programmes, collaboration is a core element of this funding. In this case, integration with Veterans’ services such as the Veterans Trauma Network is vital, offering an integrated support system that incorporates wider needs such as mental wellbeing, housing issues and overcoming isolation and loneliness. In the run up to launch, Help for Heroes established a working group, including BLESMA representatives, to ensure all teams involved understood the processes around this important programme. From this group, they have created a useful web page on the Help for Heroes website to keep applicants updated at each stage of development. As well as this application-centred support, applicants can also expect a warm handover to wider support services, should any needs become evident during the Veteran’s journey through the process. A simple but robust two-stage application system for applicants includes questions about the Veteran’s aspirations and goals after receiving the equipment, and this informs a clinical recommendation which support decisions made against applications.
Help for Heroes received 170 expressions of interest in the first four days following launch – within a month this had already risen to 300.
James Needham, Help for Heroes’ CEO, shares an insight: “[The application process] does take time, but we support the Veterans through this and ensure the right equipment for them and the right outcomes, including reaching their goals. We are also diligent in ensuring the equipment is not available on the NHS. We check if there is a contribution available, and we ensure a ‘good deal’ for the equipment, including servicing and maintenance. As well as supporting the Veteran we want to make sure we achieve value for money and effective spend of the funds.”
Early grant awards so far have included:
- a lightweight wheelchair which will improve the quality of life for a severely injured Veteran
- E-motion Duo drive electric wheels which will ease chronic pain and allow a Veteran access to family and friends
- a folding electric tricycle to allow a Veteran to be more active with his family
- a wheelchair car hoist to allow a Veteran to be more independent and access his community.
The organisation plans to hold regular decision-making panels driven by the number of applications received. Two Veterans with lived experience have been recruited to advise on the Veterans’ Mobility Fund processes and will sit on the grants panel.
For those who are successful, the Veterans will be supported with measurements and fitting where relevant to ensure they can use the new equipment safely.
Finally, follow-ups with the Veterans receiving support will take place at 6, 12 and 24 months and this will feed into an ongoing collection of data on numbers supported, personal goals achieved, equipment requested, regions and spend.
A comprehensive, ongoing evaluation of this programme is taking place.
