Veterans mental health and wellbeing pathway: impact assessment

Other considerations

Veterans and the Justice System

Veterans and the Law Report: October 2024 (Scottish Veterans Commissioner) states that while veterans make up 3.9% of the adult population in Scotland, they account for only 3.1% of the Scottish prison population. Police Scotland provide active support to applicants with a veteran background throughout the recruitment process. They estimate that approximately 700 veterans are employed across the organisation, accounting for 3% of their 23,000-strong workforce.

Veterans and homelessness

Official statistics from Homelessness in Scotland: Veterans Homelessness – September 2025 indicate that military veterans are not disproportionately represented within Scotland’s homeless population. In 2024/25, around 2.2% of homeless applicant households included at least one veteran. There were 926 homelessness applications involving veterans out of a total of 40,688 applications nationwide. This represents a slight decrease compared to the previous year, continuing a broadly stable trend.

Future changes in veteran population

A study from March 2026 - Forecasting the size and demographics of the UK Armed Forces community | RAND – references that significant change is estimated in the size of the veteran community. As the World War II and National Service generations pass away, this will leave a veteran community that is smaller, more demographically diverse and increasingly intergenerational, with a rise in the number of veterans under 30 years old.

Identified gaps in data

This EQIA has highlighted that there is a notable lack of research/data examining how socio-demographic factors – such as socio-economic status, ethnicity, sexual orientation and care experience – shape both access to mental health services and treatment outcomes for veterans.

The Veterans Mental Health and Wellbeing Pathway Framework states that one of the objectives of the pathway is to ensure consistent and proportionate data capture and outcome measurement, support assurance, improvement and accountability. Further detail on the data which will be captured is as follows:

• Demographics, referral routes, timeliness, uptake, and completion.
• Clinical and wellbeing outcomes; personal recovery measures.
• Experience of care, including perceptions of stigma, burden of retelling, and cultural safety.
• Equity indicators across geography, deprivation, gender, ethnicity, age, and disability.