Today, Thursday 28th June 2018, the Forces in Mind Trust (FiMT) is launching its ‘Third Age’ at the charity’s FiMpacT Forum held at The QEII Centre in Westminster. Ahead of Armed Forces Day on Sunday 30th June, today’s FiMpacT Forum marks the culmination in six years of grant giving, with funding from The Big Lottery Fund, to help ex-Service personnel transition into civilian life.
The Rt Hon Tobias Ellwood MP, Minister for Defence People and Veterans will give the keynote speech.
To date, FiMT has given over 100 grants totalling nearly £15 million, most notably over the past year to health and wellbeing related projects. This has included work into ending veterans’ homelessness, partnering with King’s College London on mental health issues and the associated stigma, and producing a guide for care homes with veterans, in collaboration with Cobseo (The Confederation of Service Charities) and Demos (Britain’s leading cross-party think tank).
The Third Age of FiMT will launch today, focussing on driving and sustaining the positive impact upon ex-Service personnel’s lives already achieved by FiMT’s work to date. This new age will also focus on challenging the negative stereotypes around veterans.
Chief Executive of the Forces in Mind Trust, Ray Lock says:
“Our approach identifies six areas for improving the lives of ex-Service personnel – covering Housing, Employment (including training and education), Health and Wellbeing (physical and mental), Finance, the Criminal Justice System and Relationships. The Third Age will be an exciting move from being activity led, to strategically driven and coherently focused. We’re ramping up the impact of our work, whilst maintaining the generation of knowledge and evidence for which we have become renowned.”
Hans Pung, the Chairman of the Forces in Mind Trust, says:
“As well as developing the impact of the work we’re already doing, we will also be promoting evidence over anecdote – such as working on altering stubborn perceptions of former Service personnel as “mad, bad, or sad”. We will be doing this through focusing on the real truth of personal lives, and working to establish an evidence base which truly reflects ex-Service personnel’s biographical histories, current situations and future needs.”