About us
A one-stop shop for Veterans and their families
Veterans First Point (V1P) has been developed by Veterans for Veterans and is staffed by an alliance of clinicians and Veterans. The service we provide is free at the point of access and provided as part of the NHS. V1P works in collaboration with a large range of both statutory and third sector providers to meet the needs of veterans 'whatever they may be.' There are currently six Veterans First Points in Scotland each providing a range of services that work to the same ethos. More information about each local Veterans First Point can be found on our 'Where to find us' page.
Service Ethos: Accessibility, Credibility and Co-ordination
The findings of our evaluation to date are continuing to provide further evidence that V1P services throughout Scotland are working to provide accessible, credible and co-ordinated services to veterans, and the veteran community, as per the ethos of our Service model.
Accessibility
All our services have an open referral policy and self referral is encouraged. Referrals can be taken by phone, email or you can attend one of our drop-in sessions.
Our evaluation is evidencing that we are continuing to receive referrals from all tri services and across all ranks and roles. It is encouraging to find that we continue to reach those that do not traditionally approach mainstream services for assistance:
- 31% of V1P Veterans have addresses in areas of the highest levels of social deprivation in Scotland (as classified by Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation) with only 7% living in address in areas of the least social deprivation.
- 7.5% of Veterans who are living with friends; are currently homeless or reside in homes of multiple occupancy.
- 15% of those accessing V1P Scotland services consider their current living situation unstable.
- 37% have experienced homelessness at sometime in their lives; this is a greater proportion than the previous report.
Credibility
All our services employ Veteran Peer Support workers with lived experience of the military community. All our services are governed, managed and staffed by NHS employees offering a range of evidence based treatments. At Veterans First Point you can be confident in a service that understands your experience and will provide the best possible care.
During the evaluation period more than a third of referrals were self referral and this could be interpreted as Veterans feeling safe, comfortable and understood. It is important to consider these findings with evidence from research conducted by Bronagh Weir. Weir, B Cunningham, M, Abraham, L & Allanson-Oddy, C. 2017, “Military Veteran Engagement with mental health and wellbeing services” Journal of Mental Health, August, pp. 1-7 Please use the link below to access the research.
Co-ordination
There are over 500 hundred services for Veterans in Scotland and we understand this can be difficult to navigate. Your Peer Support worker will organise supported onward referral where appropriate to the services you need. We also host in house clinics from a range of providers so that Veterans First Point acts as a safe base to meet a large range of different needs of each veteran.
Partnership working is evidenced by the large range of referral sources. Of the 37 % veterans who self referred:
- 23% were encouraged to self refer by statutory health/social care services
- 2% by prison services
- 9% having seen publicity
- 36% were encouraged to self refer by family or friends
- 25% Veterans UK and Forces Charities have also supported individuals to refer themselves