Change Step gathers pace with fund boost for military veterans across Wales

 

 

Thousands of armed forces veterans across Wales with mental health and substance misuse problems and the family members who often struggle to look after them will have a helping hand thanks to a more than £1.4 million government grant to an all-Wales service led by Llandudno-based drug and alcohol charity CAIS.

‘Change Step’, a peer mentoring service delivered by veterans for veterans since early this year, and ‘Listen In’, a sister service now being launched in North Wales to help family members and carers, have been awarded £995,918 and £434,659 respectively by the UK government’s Armed Forces Covenant LIBOR Fund.

Utilising the pan-Wales framework of the Drug and Alcohol Charities Wales (DACW) consortium, ‘Change Step’ peer mentors will work alongside CAIS in North Wales, Kaleidoscope in Gwent, TEDS in Rhondda Cynon Taf, WCADA in South Wales, Cyswllt Contact in West Wales, and Drugaid in Mid West Wales. ‘Listen In’ will be delivered by CAIS across North Wales in partnership with mental health charity Mind and the Association of Voluntary Organisations in Wrexham (AVOW). Both services are funded from February 2014 for two years.

 

CAIS Chief Executive Clive Wolfendale said: “Change Step is already proving its worth in North Wales and we can now engage energetically with partner charities to roll-out the service across the whole of Wales to help those armed forces veterans who have given so much for their country but who now find themselves, for a variety of reasons, in distress.”

“Veterans can often feel misunderstood and that is why we take on well-motivated veterans as peer mentors because there is an instant connection between them because of their shared experience. Relatives and carers often feel they have no-one to turn to either, which is why we are delighted to be launching the new Listen In service too,” said Mr Wolfendale.

Mr Wolfendale added: “Veterans frequently miss out when it comes to getting the help and services they need, not least because they may have lost confidence in themselves and the society in which they live, and so partnership working between CAIS and other charitable and statutory sector providers will be crucial to the success of this project.”

Change Step is a CAIS-led peer mentoring, welfare and advice service for military veterans and others from the blue-light emergency services who want to make positive changes to their lives. It supports those seeking or needing help for mental health and psychosocial problems such as loneliness, anger, anxiety, confusion, distress, poor self-esteem and many other issues arising from trauma or extreme stress encountered during military or operational duty. The programme offers peer support, training and educational opportunities, as well as counselling and detoxification from drugs or alcohol where required. The programme is modelled on the Welsh Government’s ESF funded all Wales peer mentoring service.

Change Step already works collaboratively with the NHS’s All Wales Veterans Health and Wellbeing Service and the Royal British Legion to ensure a comprehensive and focused service for armed forces veterans. It will be working with Bangor University’s School of Lifelong Learning and the University of Chester’s Enablement and Holistic Care Project for veterans.

As Change Step rolls out across Wales during 2014, peer mentor veterans – all trained in peer mentoring to a minimum of BTEC Level 2 – can apply to take up paid posts as team leaders and go on to recruit a wider network of peer mentor volunteers, thus ensuring an increasingly comprehensive level of service delivery. Change Step aims to reach 4,000 veterans between 2014 and 2016.

Its sister service, Listen In, will provide a bespoke Mental Health First Aid Course for family members and carers of veterans, equipping them with the awareness and skills to recognise signs of mental distress in their loved ones and providing access to practical and emotional support.

Change Step programme director Geraint Jones said: “Listen In will provide family members with the knowledge and skills to recognise crisis at an early stage, act effectively to get the support they need, facilitate the recovery of their loved one and his or her integration back into civilian life and, equally importantly, manage their own health and well-being.”

Brigadier Gerhard Wheeler CBE, military patron to Change Step, said: “I understand all too well the challenges of life in the military and the problems many veterans encounter when re-entering civilian life. Veterans have pride in having served in the military and many find it difficult to ask for help, which is why Change Step works because veterans are helping their peers. I am delighted to be supporting this extremely worthwhile and necessary venture as it expands across Wales.”

Veterans wanting to access the service or wishing to apply to become peer mentors can contact Change Step on 0845 06 121 12.

Freeloaders

This week the British Medical Association made its clearest and most timely statement to date on the issue of Britain's alcoholism crisis:
 

"We cannot afford to keep spending millions of pounds in today's economic climate on mopping up the after-effects of an alcohol problem that the government should tackle with a greater emphasis on preventive measures."

In essence, the burden that mass alcoholism is placing on the NHS is unsustainable and is pushing our hospitals to breaking point and the medical establishment knows this full well. The government knows it too, as does the alcohol industry - the more powerful of the two lobbies and the one the government chose to back. This week the BMA called once again for minimum pricing on alcohol, a strategy proven to reduce alcohol related hospital admissions in Scotland and a 'crackdown on irresponsible marketing practices' (when one considers that alcohol is normally at the top of most harm indices, causes a million assaults per year, is connected to most cases of child abuse and neglect and sees a fifth of forty somethings admitted to the emergency wards annually, it's not too controversial to suggest that all marketing practices are irresponsible).

The reason for the BMA's concern were the shocking statistics released that show an addiction epidemic amongst 40-50 year olds; town centre binge drinkers place a burden of some £22 million a year on the NHS, but home drinkers in their 40's attend hospital so frequently that they drain £670 million from the public coffers.

Thinking about things in financial terms is of course revealing and it is useful in giving us a clue to the scale of the problem (one that is 30 times the size), but we should not let these costings distance us from the human beings at the centre of this tragedy.

The largest percentile of victims of the alcohol industry are poor, nearly 40 percent come from low income brackets and most appear to be home drinkers, able to engage in their addiction away from the challenges of social situations.

In this time of austerity, when public subsidies for libraries, sports centres and buses are being cut, the alcohol industry curiously seems to be exempt from such belt tightening measures and still has one enormous tax-payer funded system to assist its operations; the NHS.

Most businesses that generate harmful waste products in the pursuit of profit or who pollute are legally obliged to clean up their messes or are levied green taxes to pay for their impact on the environment, not the drinks industry though. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill cost 11 lives and about $50bn for BP. What price the thousands of lives lost each year in Britain to alcohol abuse?

The alcohol industry privatises the profits from their activities and socialises the costs for the rest of us to pay, financially and spiritually.

 If the alcohol industry were ever forced to pay its way and to contribute to paying for the damage it caused it would collapse, an indication that the costs of alcohol far outweigh the benefits accrued to private business or society.

 Wynford Ellis Owen

CEO Living Room Cardiff