RMA – The Royal Marines Charity is delighted to have received a £300,000 Transformation Grant from The Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust (AFCFT).
Over the next five years, this will be used to fund the Charity’s ‘Building Collaboration and Consensus’ project with the aim to develop and implement a Common Assessment Framework in identifying the holistic needs of the beneficiary and their family. The project will be led by Director of Health & Wellbeing, Danny Egan.
The veteran community has itself often expressed the need for a more uniformed approach that better addresses and supports the holistic needs of the individual and their dependents in a pragmatic way across a spectrum of presenting factors.
By building collaborative partnerships across the entire Armed Forces charity sector and those organisations supporting the veteran community, the project will work to limit inconsistencies in the support of beneficiaries’ needs by creating a common framework for assessment and evaluation. The result – a seamless and consistent response, with the beneficiary and their family at the centre.
Through the sharing of data, current best practice and evidence-based findings, expectations are to develop a consensus and common template to be used across a wide spectrum of organisations that can help to more fully understand the complexity of need and support.
Earlier assessment and intervention could enhance positive outcomes and promote recovery, belonging and purpose; and will also help aid in identifying those at risk of suicidal thoughts or feelings so veterans and their dependents can get the help when they most need it.
The ‘Building Collaboration and Consensus’ project builds on the success of the Charity’s recent two-year ‘Lifting the Lid’ mental health awareness programme: and will also capture the experience drawn from the AFCFT’s ‘One Is Too Many’ projects, especially the findings and recommendations from Northumbria University’s subsequent narrative study.
Tom Wilson, Director of Development, RMA-The Royal Marines Charity says:
“We would like to express our sincerest thanks to The Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust for their funding and support towards this transformational project.
“Building on our already established partnerships, through ‘One is too Many’ and others, and those that we are still developing, we will be looking to develop an agreed common assessment framework model that can be used by multiple organisations and importantly shared with the beneficiary.
“We expect this to result in a more uniform approach at the point of initial assessment, referral and then onwards through the recovery pathway. Most importantly, it will prevent beneficiaries having to repeat and re-explain their challenges and issues time and time again.”
