Veterans in Care Homes: An International Scoping Review to Inform UK Policy and Practice
In contrast to the mental and physical health needs of veterans, veterans’ social care needs remain relatively neglected by policymakers and researchers. The aim of this study is to inform UK veterans policy and practice by drawing together the expectedly limited international research base on veterans in care homes. An international scoping review of peer-reviewed and grey research literature was conducted, informed by Levac et al.’s (2010) six-stage process. Thirty-three papers were found to meet the inclusion/exclusion criteria. The papers’ contents typically fell into one or more of the following themes: social connection, care preferences and autonomy, and military-related physical and mental health needs. Very little (n = 1) UK-situated research was found, with the majority of retrieved papers (n = 24) being US-based, impeding transferability and relevancy of the findings to a UK context. Veterans’ social care needs were found to be a largely underexplored area of research, especially in the UK. There is a pressing need for UK veterans’ policymakers to redress existing imbalances in the focus of policy and research by raising the status and importance of the social care needs of UK veterans, as has been achieved on the mental and physical health fronts.
Abstract: This research set out to investigate the experiences of ‘grown up’ children from armed forces families, to gather their reflections on childhood and education, and to seek their advice to inform the current armed forces community, policy-makers and practitioners. The Service Children’s Progression Alliance (SCiP) defines a child from an armed forces family as “a person whose parent or carer serves in the Regular Armed Forces, or as a Reservist, or has done at any point during the first 25 years of that person’s life” (SCiP, 2017: para 2) and the Office for Students refers to this definition in their documentation relating to student characteristics (OfS n.d. para 8, see also OfS, 2020: para 11). In this research we use the term ‘grown up’ to indicate individuals over the age of 18 recognised to have reached the legal age of adulthood in the UK. This group of individuals are currently overlooked in research, policy and practice as the focus continues to be on serving members of the armed forces, veterans, and families, including school-aged children.