Support for veterans and the armed forces community: 2019

The Strategy  For Our Veterans

The Strategy for our Veterans launched in November 2018 recognising the importance of supporting our Armed Forces veterans and their families and building upon the Scottish Government’s support for our Armed Forces and veterans community, as set out in Renewing our Commitments (2016), and through the previous annual updates to the Scottish Parliament.  

The Strategy, jointly developed with the other governments of the United Kingdom, builds upon the work to support veterans by organisations across the public, private and charity sectors. It sets a clear vision to ensure the best possible outcomes for our veterans and their families in the future, with the aims that every veteran would feel even more valued, supported and empowered.

Since its publication last year, we have been consulting thoroughly and extensively across Scotland about how to take the Strategy’s aims forward with veterans, their families and the many organisations who support them.

This reinforced the valuable work undertaken by so many through veterans charities and organisations, often unpaid, to support and improve the lives of veterans. The feedback gathered in Scotland, along with that collected by the UK Government during its wider public consultation, about the needs of the veterans community has equipped us to develop our response to the Strategy. Looking ahead we will soon publish a document setting out how we will take the vision and aims of the Strategy forward in Scotland to ensure that veterans and their families receive the support they deserve.