Combat Stress announces outcome of consultation

In September we launched a consultation with employees and veterans following the unveiling of our new five year strategic plan. The consultation ended last month and, following the feedback we received, Combat Stress will be making some changes to our services.

Chief Executive Sue Freeth said:

“In the last ten years we have seen a 143% increase in referrals for our specialist clinical treatment. This has made it more challenging to provide timely treatment to those former servicemen and women who need our help.

“Our residential Intensive Treatment Programme has been successful in transforming the lives of veterans but going forward, our clinical view is that residential treatment is not the only answer if we want to achieve more.

“We recently consulted with our employees and veterans on proposals that would enable us to use our resources more effectively to support veterans more quickly and more flexibly, while raising the money needed to fund our work.

“Having taken their feedback into consideration, I can confirm we will no longer be delivering residential treatment at our Audley Court centre in Shropshire. We will design and deliver a number of non-residential programmes in the Central region that work around veterans’ existing commitments, such as work or family life. We will continue to provide residential programmes in our treatment centres based in Ayrshire and Surrey.

“We met with representatives from our Veteran Engagement Group and the Save Audley Court Facebook Group. The veterans put forward a proposal to retain a block of accommodation at Audley Court for use by those attending the centre for an outpatient appointment or in need of support. We have agreed to explore the feasibility of this proposal and the potential impact this could have with our clinical registration with the Care Quality Commission by early 2018.

“We are not able to confirm the number of employees being made redundant until December 2017 due to the next stage of the internal recruitment process.”

If veterans would like to contact us about these decisions they can email veterans@combatstress.org.uk.