Guidance

VAPC East Midlands: meeting minutes 18 March 2019

Updated 24 October 2024

Location: Prince William of Gloucester Barracks Grantham

Present

• Peter Poole (Chair)
• Patrick Rendall
• Michael Whitehead
• Barry Smith
• Dick Hurwood
• Stav Melides
• Bill Dixon-Dodds
• Janis Mumford
• Gillian Ekins
• Ray Boyfield
• John Berry
• Larry Henson
• David Wilson
• Julia Taberham
• Jim Wright

Apologies

• David Taylor
• Helen Drew-Bradley
• Ron Gaitpain

Welcome

The Chairman welcomed members to the meeting and in particular Julia Taberham who has joined the committee.In addition he said that Bentley Strafford-Stephenson had also joined and would be attending in future.

Declarations of interest

There were no declarations of interest that would affect the work of the Committee.

Apologies for absence

The Chairman accepted apologies from those listed who were unable to attend the meeting. He informed the committee he would be contacting Ron Gaitpain who was finding it difficult to attend meetings and had also been unavailable on two occasions to attend interviews as part of the selection process for appointment to the committee. At present he is a co-opted member. After due consideration, the committee was content to support the Chairman in his approach.

VWS update

VWS who have been attending committee meetings were not represented at this meeting. The Vice Chairman would make contact and ensure they were invited to the meeting in June 2019. A welfare service update would be circulated by the chairman after the Chairs’ meeting.

After note: Vice Chairman has contacted WVS and been assured of attendance at the next meeting.

Confirmation of minutes of the last meeting held on 21st January 2019

The minutes were confirmed.

Matters arising

Item 4.2 The item mentioned that under Career Transition Partnership (CTP) 94% of leavers were ‘captured’ but 6% had either slipped through the net or did not want assistance. This lead to a discussion where it was agreed that it was important to portray an accurate picture of highlighting the success of the majority, whilst spotlighting and concentrating on the needs of the minority.

Item 7.1 Two new members had joined the committee on this recruiting round. The Chairman had been informed by Vets UK that 4 members would reach the 10 year point at the and of this year – including himself. It was likely that those in the category would be able to serve one more year on the committee and would then have to resign or apply for their own positions. There followed a discussion about the loss of welfare expertise with the resignations of 3 of the Service charity welfare officers over the last 2 years and in turn the loss of connection with the charity sector. It was agreed that approaches should be made to Service charities to find suitable individuals to serve on the committee and in turn raise its awareness of welfare guidance and regulations within the sector. This needed to be discussed with sub-committee leads.

Item 8.1 Chairs Meeting feedback. The Chairman explained that the minutes had only just been received, some months after the meeting. In addition the committee noted the report from Head of Vets UK to the Minister and felt that it did not reflect input from the Committee report to Veterans UK. The Chairman would raise this with the Chair of Chairs and explain that East Midlands VAPC was not content that work in this region had been accurately reflected and within the report points of importance intended for the centrehad not been included.

Item 8.4 The Chairman had 80 copies of the East Midlands VAPC leaflet, which he would distribute.

Sub-committee reports

Health

Dick Hurwood recently attended the Strategy for Veterans Consultation event in Stockport. Feedback was included in the Chairman’s final report on the strategy. Following discussions at LLR CMPB, there was a telephone conference with Jim Khambatta of NHS England and other CMPB colleagues. A meeting with 7 Brigade and interested parties was arranged to set up an Armed Forces Network for the East Midlands. 7 Brigade subsequently agreed to this, and are awaiting NHSE lead’s response to this proposal. 7 Brigade has been asked to prioritise.

A presentation to Leicester City Health & Wellbeing Board (HWB) aimed to raise awareness of veterans’ issues. Leicester are planning their health and wellbeing agenda with particular emphasis on GP accreditation. Further work is ongoing.

Dick has attended the Quad Nations international wheelchair rugby in Leicester where several veterans were playing. He gave his details to one whom he understood might be having issues with support following an injury that occurred during service.

Dick also attended GP Registrar training at Kettering, where he addressed the 67 attendees. The main aims were to promote TILS and GP accreditation. The all-day event was led by Colonel Julian Woodhouse and a range of veterans and relatives of veterans were able to share their military and health experiences with these doctors in training. The speakers were inspirational. More training is planned in Leicester in May.

The paper “The UK Armed Force charity sector: a summary of provision’ on page 10 quotes c2,200 military charities, which is a figure he will use in future briefings.

Finally there was discussion about the possibility of arranging a visit to Stanford Hall. Dick Hurwood would investigate but at present held out no real hope of a visit for the committee.

Governance

Barry Smith provided the committee with a full report embracing activity within the region. It is attached. It contained a number of areas for discussion. A fundamental issue was that some LA partnership boards are more successful than others. Some have not yet included all the attendees (for instance NHS etc) required to become an informed partnership board, and some were chaired at the wrong level. In addition some LAs had managed to fund Armed Forces Covenant Engagement Officers and some had not. Where they were in place significant progress was being made. None of these posts were funded and firm in the long term, but were proving to be vital to the progress of the AFC process. Barry considered that the concerns of funding these posts in the long term should be brought to the attention of Minister.

The Chairman advised the meeting that he was considering inviting Paul Cummings the Chairman of Veterans Aid to give a short presentation about the work of Veterans Aid in helping homeless ex Service personnel.

Welfare

On this occasion there was no report from the Welfare Sub-Committee. However there was disappointment that the Vets in Custody initiative had lost its way. The Benefits issue was a major problem for some veterans, with no significant way of being able to improve the situation. It was noted that Universal Credit had been raised equally by all VAPCs as a significant detrimental issue.

Communications

Michael Whitehead explained that he preferred the use of Twitter to a web site as the wording was more succinct and it was a tool that was widely used. He considered MOD should note the use of social media and embrace it as a positive tool in its engagement. He encouraged members of the committee to try it out. In further discussion the following was said:

• a library of documents would be useful for members but this would have to be external to the MOD site, for access was not possible for VAPCs

• the MOD was considering a communications strategy for new veterans. The reference to the Gateway site was not entirely successful and the site not easy to use

• Michael asked the Chairman to raise e-learning at the next chairs’ meeting

• Michael agreed to investigate LinkedIn to see whether it would be of any use to our committee.

Response to consultation - veterans strategy

This Chairman explained that the document was a large piece of work, which had been carried out by MOD, and it was important that members should respond to him accordingly. Nevertheless a detailed response had been sent back and this had been circulated.

Strategic business plan - 2019 update

The Chairman would lead with the update of the strategic plan 2019, He asked sub-committee leads to review their business plans accordingly. He would be grateful if this work could be completed by the meeting in June and he felt that a significant rewrite was not necessary.

Chairs meeting 21 March - items for the agenda

The Chairman had recently circulated an email which listed the items he would be taking to the Chairs Meeting which was due to take place on 21st March 2019.

Breakfast clubs

Half the available funding held in the account had been used to support breakfast clubs thus far. £1323 remained. There was a general discussion, where it was accepted that breakfast clubs had proved popular and worthwhile. However, some were reticent about them being held in pubs where that was the case. Finally the VWS stand at the televised club in Nottingham had proved to be very worthwhile.

Any other business

GDPR - The Chairman had been sent 2 GDPR discs from Vets UK and he and Gillian Ekins would consider the information and report back to the committee.

Date of next meeting

The next meeting is to take place at 10.30 am on 17th June 2019 at Grantham.