Guidance

VAPC Yorkshire and Humber: meeting minutes 13 May 2024

Updated 5 November 2024

Attendees

• Alex Baxter (Chair)
• Chris Nolan (Vice Chair)
• Iain Burnside
• Adrian Hunt
• Norman Turnbull (Co-opted)
• Chris Mason (Secretary)
• Ron Laden
• Elspeth Duemmer-Wrigley
• John Topping (Co-opted)
• Alex Bentley
• Derek Cross
• Rick Short
• Helen Singleton

Apologies

• Nick Mitchell (Co-opted)
• Tim Cole
• Pete Mason

Absent

• Steve Griffiths
• Mike Chambers (Co-opted)
• Craig Gadd (Co-opted)
• Andrew Palmer (Co-opted)
• Christine Landess (Co-opted)
• Huw Bell

Observer or guest

Nil

2. General items

a. Introductions, welcomes and apologies:

The Chair, Alex Baxter, welcomed members to the meeting, both in person and by Zoom, including Derek Cross to his first meeting. Apologies were noted as above.

b. Minutes of the Last Meeting/ Actions with VAPC:

The minutes from the last meeting were accepted unanimously by those present.

Actions from the minutes were as follows:

1. (6). Circulate draft Statutory Instrument document to members for comment. [Sec - completed 17 February 2024]

2. (7.b.(ii)). The Chair to ask UK CVC meeting to agree Y&H to lead on matters relating to asbestosis. [Chair - completed 15 February 2024]

3. (7.b.(ii)). Draft letter to precede question to Min DP&F. [Chair/VC - completed]

4. (7.c). Draft letter to NHS Trust. [IB/EW - completed by VC]

5. (8.a). Contact with Coventry and Warwickshire ICB. [V/C - completed]

6. (8.b). John Topping to supply Chair with NY LA contact details for letter. [JT/Chair - ongoing - defer until after LA elections]

7. (9). Draft question set for annual report enquiry. When drafted, circulate to members for comment. [VC/IB/JT/AH - completed]

8. (10). Chair to revise ‘SW Onboarding’ induction document as rolling resource. [Chair - long term aspiration depending on AFVS actions for induction]

3. Feedback and updates

a. Chair’s feedback (including UK Council of VAPC Chairs):

The Chair provided an overview of recent national activity, particularly the recent letter from Min DP&F to chairs dated 10 May 2024, which has implications for the structure and content of our annual report. We await to see what guidance is forthcoming from the UK CVC meeting scheduled for tomorrow. A copy of the letter will be circulated to members with these minutes.

The Chair referenced his recent presentation to the Humberside and East Riding Veterans Covenant Board describing the structure and functions of the Y&H VAPC. He thanked the Vice-chair and Elspeth Duemmer-Wrigley for their assistance in creating the presentation. The Chair suggested that with editing to give a local focus, the presentation would form an ideal template for members to present to their Local Authority Covenant Board and indeed other stakeholders. He encouraged members to consider this. The secretary will store an original version of the presentation for members to access.

4. UK CVC Common Interest Groups

The Committee was reminded of the re-naming of national sub-groups as Common Interest Groups (CIGs), with the creation of new groups for Education (primarily schooling), Debt and Finance and Housing and the re-forming of Health & Wellbeing. The Committee agreed that it would be desirable for us to mirror these sub-groups within our structure, with a named sub-group member and point of contact (poc). Individuals volunteered as detailed below. It is worth noting that some of the sub-groups are not yet active and do not have a lead. The secretary will forward Y&H names to active sub-group leads and keep the other names on record until a lead is nominated.

CIG	Y&H member poc
Education *	Rick Short
Employment & Transitioning	John Topping
Finance and debt *	John Topping
Health & Wellbeing	Iain Burnside
Housing *	Alex Bentley
Law & Criminal Justice System	Elspeth Duemmer-Wrigley
Support	Chris Mason

(* not yet active)

In addition (see AOB), Helen Singleton suggested the creation of a Y&H Welfare sub-group in which Norman Turnbull agreed to join her. It was agreed that we would support UK CVC developing standardised Terms of Reference across all CIGs.

5. Break

6. Annual Report preparation

a. Feedback from Y&H questionnaire

The Chair thanked those involved in the design and delivery of the recent “Y&H questionnaire”. Iain Burnside then reported the highlights from his report on the results of the recent questionnaire:

During March-April 2024 a survey was conducted with a select sample of veterans in the region. 83 responses to the questionnaire, (see attached) were received. 75 were from the paper version and 8, were from on a veterans’ breakfast club Facebook site via Survey Monkey. Due to technical problems with the survey this misses out question 6. Due to the lack of a pilot study the use of the answer headings “aware” & “not used” may have led to some double counting.

Respondents were offered the opportunity to have a confidential discussion with Dr I G Burnside on any issues that the questionnaire raised for them No one accepted the offer.

11 questionnaires were completed by the Ripon Veterans Breakfast club, 33 from the REME Association, Doncaster & District and the Military Community Veterans Centre, Rotherham and the rest by the Castleford & Five Towns Breakfast Club and Veterans’ Hub members.

Iain Burnside then took the Committee through his preliminary analysis of the results. It was discussed that out of this work come two strands, one relating to a direct input into the Y&H Annual Report (AR) to the Minister and a second is to investigate as actions some of the issues raised e.g. General Practitioner awareness, Veteran ID cards and Op NOVA (The Chair said that he would open an initial engagement with the Police and Crimes Commissioner for Humberside and North Lincolnshire and report back).

It was decided to cover the recent Y&H H&W Hearing Loss Project (7.a.(i)) here, as there were a number of synergies with the questionnaire, not least in wishing to include details in our AR. John Topping reported on his Freedom of Information (FoI) inquiries, and it was apparent that there were many variations in practice and experience across Y&H depending on location. It was discussed that a way forward with this work would be to engage with our area Integrated Care Boards (Humber and North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire). The Y&H H&W group will assess how to proceed with this.

b. Next steps

Discussed at 6.a.

7. Health sub-group

a. Health Programme update:

(i) Hearing Loss Project: Discussed at 6.a.

(ii) Asbestosis update:

Chris Nolan reported that despite a FoI enquiry there has been no progress on this subject. It was discussed as to where best to pursue this matter and a decision was made to take it to the newly re-formed Health & Wellbeing Common Interest Group.

(iii) Iain Burnside confidential report – not for minuting.

b. Discussion:

John Topping then detailed an individual case of a veteran whom he has been supporting in his interaction with AFVS. The Chair stated that he would discuss the case further with Rob Rowntree at AFVS.

8. Local/ ICB/ Local Authority (LA)/ other stakeholders updates from members

An update from Beverley regarding the Poppy Appeal from Ron Laden and John Topping updated on matters relating to the commemoration of D-Day in York.

9. GDPR

The secretary asked if everyone would be happy to complete a ‘GDPR form’, based on the one used by AFVS, to give permission for Y&H VAPC to hold and utilise their contact details to enable communication to and from the committee. The secretary will circulate the form.

10. AOB

Helen Singleton made the suggestion to set-up a Welfare Sub-group (see point 4).

11. Next meeting

8 July 2024 – again at Imphal Barracks, York.