After hard work by a team of staff including former military personnel, SHSC has been accredited as Veteran Aware, meaning the Trust takes account of the needs of the armed forces community.

The team has been working tirelessly to ensure we meet the requirements of the bronze accreditation and will continue to work towards silver and then gold levels.

The work which allowed us to become bronze accredited included:

Establishing links with the Sheffield Community Covenant Partnership Board (we will attend their meetings to liaise with local organisations about veteran care)

• Working with local charities to support the establishment of their work in Sheffield to support veterans
• The writing of a a new patient access policy to redefine veteran care in the Trust
• The redesign of our complaints process to capture veteran status and make plans to design a specific veteran complaints feedback survey
• Work with the Rio Go Live team to rebuild and improve our patient data collection tools so that we can support clinical staff to gather data about our veteran communities.

We are dedicated to continuing this work and much of it is ongoing.

The accreditation process was overseen by the Veterans Covenant Healthcare Alliance (VCHA), whose aim is to make sure that people from the armed forces community, including families, are paid due regard and are not disadvantaged in terms of access to and outcomes of healthcare, as a result of their military life in line with the principles of the Armed Forces Covenant.

It does this by developing, sharing and driving the implementation of best practice, while at the same time raising standards for everyone in NHS Trusts in England.

The Trust is already signed up to the Armed Forces Covenant - a promise by the nation ensuring that those who serve, or who have served, in the armed forces, and their families, are treated fairly.