Military Veterans
At Orchard Medical Practice we are proud to be accredited as Veteran Friendly by the RCGP. Our Clinical Lead is Nurse Practitioner Ange Bloomfield and our Social Prescriber
As a practice we have pledged to support our ex-military as best we can. We would like to encourage all our veterans to come forward and identify yourselves, so we can offer you enhanced support.
Knowing that a patient is a veteran will help us to better meet the health commitments of the Armed Forces Covenant, whereby the armed forces community, including veterans, should face no disadvantage in accessing health services and should receive priority care for military attributable conditions, subject to the clinical need of others.
The NHS is able to offer a personalised care approach for those veterans who have a long term physical, mental or neurological health condition or disability.
Support Contacts
Op COURAGE
The Veterans Mental Health and Wellbeing Service
In March 2021, NHS England and NHS Improvement announced the new name for its veterans mental health services; Op COURAGE: The Veterans Mental Health and Wellbeing
Service. This is the new overarching name for the Veterans’ Mental Health Transition, Intervention and Liaison Service (TILS), Veterans’ Mental Health Complex Treatment
Service (CTS) and Veterans’ Mental Health High Intensity Service (HIS). The new name has been developed following feedback from veterans and their families to make it easier for those leaving the military and veterans to find help.
Op COURAGE provides specialist care and support for Service leavers, reservists, veterans and their families who can self refer or ask a GP, charity or someone else to refer them
Veterans Trauma Network (VTN)
The VTN is the first NHS veterans’ physical health care pathway, providing care and treatment to those with a service-attributable healthcare problem. Located in thirteen major trauma centres (Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Leeds, Liverpool, London (three centres), Middlesbrough, Nottingham, Oxford and Plymouth) across England, the VTN works closely with Defence Medical Services, national centres of clinical expertise and Op COURAGE, as well as military charities to provide a complete package of care. GP to refer
Combat Stress
Combat Stress is the UK’s leading mental health charity for veterans. It provides free specialised clinical treatment and support to ex-servicemen and women across the UK with mental health conditions. Combat Stress has a strategic partnership with the MOD and the Department of Health and Social Care. This enables the charity to work with NHS mental health to develop services suitable for military veterans.
Blesma
Blesma supports limbless veterans to lead independent and fulfilling lives. Blesma is dedicated to assisting serving and ex-service men and women who have suffered life-changing limb loss or the use of a limb, an eye or loss of sight. They support these men and women in their communities throughout the UK and provide centralised assistance to those living overseas.
Blesma works closely with the NHS to ensure the latest advances in the relevant medical fields are converted into practical solutions that can benefit all of their members. They do not provide members prosthetics, but they do help prosthetists develop their skills at undergraduate and PhD level.
Contact
Contact is a group of charitable, support and state organisations that have joined forces to enhance mental health support available to the Armed Forces community. The partnership consists of Big White Wall, Cobseo, Combat Stress, Help for Heroes, The Royal British Legion, Walking With The Wounded, the NHS, the MOD, the UK Psychological Trauma Society and King’s College London. Contact aims to improve collaborative care management, increase instances of help-seeking behaviour, improve service provision, encourage best practice across the sector and improve public knowledge of what support is available and how best to access it.
SSAFA
SSAFA – the Armed Forces charity, formerly known as Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association, is a UK charity that provides lifelong support to serving men and women and veterans from the British Armed Forces and their families or dependents. They give individual help, support and guidance either personally or over the phone.
TIL
The Veterans’ Mental Health Transition, Intervention and Liaison (TIL) Service (formerly known as London Veterans’ Service (LVS) is a free NHS mental health service for all ex-serving members of the UK Armed Forces and service personnel who are making the transition to civilian life including reservists. They work with any veterans’ and those transitioning from military to civilian who live in London, Greater London, East and West Sussex, Surrey, Kent and Medway or are registered with a GP in these areas. They work with veterans’ who are experiencing mental health, addiction and general wellbeing issues, based at St. Pancras Hospital.
Veterans Aid
Veterans Aid support ex-servicemen and women in crisis. They also help with financial issues and enable interventions to support sustainable and independent living. First interventions include the provision of food, new clothing and shelter. Further support involves education, assistance with employment, and help in moving into a new home.
Royal British Legion
the country’s largest Armed Forces charity, with 180,000 members, 110,000 volunteers and a network of partners and charities; helping us give support wherever and whenever it’s needed.
Help the Heroes
Life can be tough when a military career comes to an end, especially if it has been cut short by illness or injury. Overnight, people lose not only their job, but also a support network that is like family.
There are many ways we help veterans, their relatives, serving personnel, and people who worked alongside the UK military.
A bespoke drug and alcohol service offering confidential advice and support to current and ex HM Forces personnel and their families, across Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Cambridgeshire.
Combat2Coffee is a Community Interest Company (CIC) set up in 2018 by our founder, Nigel Seaman. We are committed to producing, selling and serving the finest coffee which enables our mission to improve the mental health, wellbeing and outcomes for veterans, ex-uniformed personnel, their families and communities.