Welcome to our October Update.
As the nights draw in and the weather turns again, life can become even more difficult for many, particularly anyone feeling isolated, and we’re looking at new ways to keep everyone connected at a more local and regional level. Our Community Team are there to help, but we hope the first of our new initiatives to roll out will help generate more opportunities for peer connection and involvement, and these are our online regional Cafés launching in November. More detail, along with dates, is included in our news and regional sections below and on our website, or you can request details through our website Contact Us page.
We are aware our newsletter grows longer and longer each month though, and some information risks being lost or hard to find with a lot to scroll through now, but we are working with our website provider to enable better visibility and access to information, news and stories on the website, so please watch out for details there too, as well as in our update bulletins.
It’s been yet another busy month for the FWP team, working with the community and organisations, developing current and future support pathways, services and activities, and with the memorial and campaign developments too. We have included memorial and campaign updates separately below to make them easier to find. Our team members have also been delighted to join veterans at some of the recent larger service restorative action and welcome ceremonies that took place as part of the inclusive welcomes the services are undertaking. These included the RAF service ceremony held at the RAF College Hall Officers Mess, RAF Cranwell, the WRAC Association ceremony at Guildford, and the RN ceremony held at HMS President in London, with a combined total of over 50 veterans attending, plus their guests. They were each certainly emotional occasions but we are delighted that the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We thank all three services, from the very senior officers supporting and presenting, to the LGBT+ network, MOD and single-service restorative action teams and base personnel for organising, and all the personnel who hosted, for their commitment, their understanding, their caring addresses and for arranging such heartfelt warm welcomes. These events have all been covered in our social media, and the smiles have been fabulous to see, but, with prior permissions, we hope to capture a selection of images and personal accounts of the days to include on our upgraded website, once we have that in place. We’d love to include photos and accounts from other ceremonies too, past and future, so watch out for details on when and how you can take part in that if you wish to.
At the beginning of October, we held our own Community Team get-together, in the National Museum of the Royal Navy, at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, where we all had the opportunity to look back on the past 4 months in particular, and to discuss our future aims and strategies. We were delighted to be joined by our newest (SW) VCW, Ellie, and to be re-joined by Kate, our NE VCW, following her recovery from a serious illness. Kate will be taking it easy on doctor’s orders for a while yet, but is already reconnecting in the NE. We always combine in-person meetings with specialist training opportunities and this time we received an excellent and really helpful briefing from Nina Slocombe, Director of the Victim Witness Care Unit (VWCU). We’re delighted that Nina is going to speak at a future Town Hall about the VWCU and how it can support veterans as well as serving personnel, and we will let you know as soon as that is scheduled.
During October’s Town Hall we were grateful to Roly Woods (LGBT+ Armed Forces Community Memorial Officer), Craig Jones MBE (Head of Campaign) and Julie Grugel (MOD’s Defence People Team, leading the Restorative Actions Team) for their updates and Q&A opportunities. Recordings from Roly and Julie’s updates can be accessed via the link in the Town Hall section below, and this newsletter contains further updates on Memorial and Campaign below too.
As FWP’s Chair, Ed says, “It’s been a very busy time for FWP, and I loved meeting so many of you in Blackpool. I heard many stories of the help that our community workers have done to help members of our community access veteran’s services, as well as health services and benefits. Please don’t be afraid to get in touch with our team for a chat, and to find out more about what we can do to help. You can see from the Pride in Veterans Standard list, that there are now hundreds of organisations that have promised to give an understanding welcome to LGBT+ service people and veterans. Of course, the campaign has been a huge priority for us, and remains so. Thank you for all the actions you have taken to keep the pressure up, and to Craig for driving the campaign forward. But whilst that campaign has our highest profile, I wanted in this update to remind you that our most important role is in supporting you, and that Caroline and the team are ready to do what they can to signpost and help if you have any welfare needs.
Our next meetings will be around remembrance, which will be a timely moment to think about what remembrance means to our community. I look forward to learning more about the feedback you have given the team on that. Finally, it’s been an amazing time for many in our community being recognised in awards ceremonies. We didn’t win them all, but the nominations are great recognition by themselves. It was great to see Rank Outsiders, represented by Robert Ely (Co-founder with Elaine Chambers), with Roly Woods in support and Tremaine Cornish, as Finalists in the Defence Inclusivity Award at the Soldiering On Awards: Dougie Morgan and Shân Veillard-Thomas as Finalists in the LGBTQ+ Defence Awards Veteran of the Year Award and Anthony Knight MBE KJ representing FWP’s Community Team in the English Veterans Awards.
I look forward to seeing many of you in November. Ed“
Although our Finalists didn’t take home ‘Winner’ titles, they were already all winners and should be tremendously proud of the achievements and differences they have made. We are delighted that Rank Outsiders received long-overdue recognition for their ground-breaking peer support and campaign work throughout the 1990’s. Poignantly, it came just weeks after the 25thAnniversary of the 27th September 1999 European Court of Human Rights judgement, that the ban was illegal.
A significant part of these awards is of course the opportunity to network and speak on stage, helping raise awareness, visibility and support, and, as the Supported Charity of the LGBTQ Defence Awards, FWP is extremely thankful of the organisers and all contributors in the Silent Auction – prize donators and bidders – who collectively raised over £4000 to help support FWP’s work, and to all those individuals who provided introductions or connections for future discussions on collaborative support.
We will round our message off now, as there is a lot of information following in this newsletter, about new, ongoing and future projects, events and activities, and we hope you enjoy reading about them as much as getting the opportunity to take part where you can. Work is still underway in coordinating, developing and finalising plans for 2025 anniversary events and we will update you on those as soon as we can. In the meantime, we look forward to catching up soon, and seeing those of you attending our next Town Hall in November or in London for the National Service of Remembrance Ceremony, if not before.
Best wishes,
Caroline and Ed
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