Health

Forces in Mind Trust was founded in November 2011 by a £35 million endowment from the National Lottery Community Fund. The Trust works within the military charities sector, and much more widely, to support the United Kingdom’s Armed Forces Community.

To achieve impact for ex-Service personnel transitioning into civilian life and their families, we fund work across six interconnecting outcome areas. This is outcome area is: Health - All Veterans and their families enjoy a state of positive physical and mental health and wellbeing, enabling them to contribute to and benefit from wider society.

Sustainable change: - All our grants and commissions are intended to generate sustained change that improves the lives of ex-Service personnel and their families. We also recognize that it can be as important to know what does not work as what does, and we do not consider such precious funds wasted. National focus: - We support work that can influence across the UK. We recognise that often it is small, regionally-based initiatives that can produce the most profound and innovative effect, and we will always work with grant and commission holders to develop their plans to ensure that the evidence generated is fully exploited.

The programme has two main workstreams; 'The Person' (the 'Understand') function of the veterans and families' condition, behaviours and need (including the nature of health inequalities), and 'The Provider' (the 'Deliver') function of health and service provision (including recognising the veteran in the system, pathway navigation, interventions and their efficacy.)

We fund projects to improve: *Understanding of veterans’ health needs and clinical priorities. *Faster ‘triage’ of veteran health and wellbeing issues. *Awareness of veteran health and wellbeing support pathways. *Recognition of veterans at the point of presentation. *Understanding of veterans’ mental health. *Understanding of common addictions in the ex-Service community. *Quality of life support in relation to conditions attributable to service in the Armed Forces. *Health and wellbeing understanding and support for families. *‘Intelligent’ network of health and wellbeing provision for veterans and families.

We welcome applications from various organisations from small not-for-profit groups and charities to larger institutions such as universities.

We will not support the following no matter how worthwhile: *Service delivery unless it is required as part of a broader project where the primary purpose of the project is to support one or more of our four change mechanisms. *Work that does not benefit Service men, women, veterans and their families. *Work that does not have a direct benefit in the UK, but this does not preclude the support for foreign and commonwealth groups that have served in the UK Armed Forces. *Work that is primarily the responsibility of central or local government and statutory providers such as local authorities and Primary Care Trusts, or projects which directly replace statutory funding. *Profit-making organisations, unless the objective is in support of Service men, women, veterans and their families as part of a corporate social responsibility programme. *Grants to individuals – this is a primary role of existing Services charities and benevolent funds. This exclusion includes grants to individuals carrying out research e.g. PhD students. *Organisations whose unrestricted reserves equate to more than one year of operations. *Ongoing costs for a project which is already established. *Retrospective funding. *Churches or other religious bodies where the grant will be used for religious purposes. *General appeals or circulars.