Meet the Expert: Ann Griffiths
Welcome to 'Meet the Expert', our series bringing you informative interviews with Armed Forces researchers, policy makers and service providers. Read on to learn about current work, aspirations for progress and future work, and insights into expert perspectives on key issues impacting ex-Service personnel and their families.
In this issue, we interviewed Ann Griffiths, Head of Policy and Research at the Royal British Legion (RBL). RBL are the country’s largest Armed Forces charity, offering tailored support, guidance and expert advice to the Armed Forces community and funding critical research that explores key issues impacting Serving and ex-Service personnel, and their families.
1. Please tell us about your background and how you came to be involved in work relating to the Armed Forces Community.
After a couple of political advisory roles, I worked in local government for seven years in the first part of my career. I became Head of Policy at Ealing Council, where I developed a passion for leading policy and research that works alongside service delivery teams to make a practical difference.
After that, I joined the Early Intervention Foundation, one of the government’s ‘what works’ centres, and learned about the value of evaluation, and evidence-based strategy and services. Then I worked at the Money & Pensions Service, overseeing a programme of research, commissioned delivery and evaluation, and policy influencing, to develop and deliver a national strategy on financial education for children & young people.
After a couple of years at St Giles Trust, which brought me into the charity sector and convinced me of the importance of lived experience in research, service design, and delivery, I saw this job advertised at RBL. It felt like the chance to bring all my professional experience into a role where I could focus on the topics and the community that have always been closest to my heart. I said at the time of joining it was a most enormous privilege and I feel that afresh every day. I am very grateful for the opportunity to do fulfilling work alongside brilliant, dedicated people who never lose sight of what it’s all about - creating positive change for our community.
2. What projects are you currently working on and how do they fit into the bigger picture of understanding and supporting the Armed Forces Community?
We have a programme of work aiming to better understand the needs and experiences of our community, and how policy and provision can meet those needs more effectively. A few examples:
On the policy side, we have produced a ‘policy programme,’ which sets out the changes we want this government to make for our community. We worked hard to identify the issues and evidence the changes needed, drawing from research and robust data sources, alongside extensive engagement. This programme will shape our influencing agenda for the coming year and beyond.
We are continuing to update and extend our ‘Armed Forces Community Needs Analysis,’ drawing insights from data from Census 2021/22 alongside the best available wider evidence, and our own beneficiary data. We believe this remains the only project looking at the demographics and needs of the entire community, and we are working to create more interactive versions to help people understand the information available for their local areas, to help inform future policy, service planning, and delivery.
We have supported our Recovery services to commission an independent evaluator for our services for Team UK for the Invictus Games, and the Battle Back centre. We also have an independent evaluation of the Veteran Friendly Framework for care homes underway (in partnership with Royal Star & Garter, with additional funding support from the Office for Veterans Affairs). We believe all these projects will create insight on impact and process that will be of value not just to RBL, but the wider sector in the long term.
3. What other areas and issues relating to the Armed Forces Community are you especially passionate about or feel need further attention? Please expand on this and tell us about them, as much as you can.
We can definitely do more in the sector to listen to and learn from the voice of children & young people. There are at least half a million of them in our community, yet work with them, and research involving them, seems too infrequent, even if the safeguarding and ethical considerations are extensive. I think we could also do more to understand the needs of the families of veterans and ensure support is available specifically for them, not just veterans themselves.
I would like to see more focus on topics that can be considered ‘too hard’ in general. For example – the question of how we can meaningfully start to unpick the influences of pre, during, and post-service experiences for people who face difficulties. What support might best prevent issues, not just support people with them when they occur? What moments might be turning points, and how can we maximise the value of protective factors in people’s lives?
I’m also passionate about the wisdom of lived experience both in research, and service design and delivery. By this, I mean the involvement not only of those people who are professional experts who also have lived experience, but also people who might normally be considered purely as a beneficiary, or member of the community.
In terms of specific research gaps, I would like to see more around a huge range of topics, including social care needs and experiences, domestic violence and abuse, the long-term experiences of bereaved families, homelessness beyond rough sleeping... And I’d like to see all of us working in charities and public sector organisations in this sector keep getting better at evaluating the impact and effectiveness of services.
4. What are your future aspirations for the impact and utilization of your or your organisation's wider work?
I would like the work we do to be of use to the entire sector in informing planning, delivery, and policy. I want our policy and research outputs to stand up to tough scrutiny, and provide policymakers, funders, and service delivery organisations with insight and evidence that is of practical value in making decisions about what to do, when, and how.
There are so many questions that we all want answered, I would also like to be able to drive more work that’s genuinely multi-agency throughout the planning, design, and delivery phases.
5. What do you think are the key challenges impacting current veterans and their families, and how do you think policy or provision of services can be best used to address them?
It varies depending on which veterans we are thinking about. For the oldest veterans and their spouses/partners, and anyone helping care for them, there are issues faced by the wider community that can be compounded by their experiences in Service – like accessing appropriate, tailored social care, and health services.
For younger veterans, again some of the issues are those facing wider society, just with unique and sometimes additional challenges resulting from previous mobility, separation from family, and the experiences of Service life. These areas include financial wellbeing and managing debt, dealing with relationship difficulties, access to affordable and well-maintained homes, access to health services and education for their family.
There’s also good evidence that there are some issues that affect our community to a greater extent than the wider population – including some mental health conditions and substance misuse, and domestic violence & abuse. Then of course there are issues that a smaller number of veterans face but which are absolutely vital to address – like the impacts of discrimination or abuse in Service, including the long-term consequences of how LGBTQ+ personnel were treated under ‘the ban’; and the unfair situation where military compensation can be treated as income in means-testing for benefits.
We have policy asks on all these issues – there are practical steps the UK government could take to deliver tangible change to address these challenges and more. Steps that would make an impact across these issues include ensuring that the Armed Forces Covenant Duty applies to all policy areas and all parts of government and the public sector, and ensuring that public organisations identify and record information about the Armed Forces community, so we can plan future services and policy based on better quality data and insights.
6. What do you think will be the leading challenges for the next generation of veterans and how do you think policy or provision of services can be best used to address them?
I think some of the issues in the answer above are unlikely to change radically in the next couple of decades unless policy or support available shifts significantly, and we do much more to understand why some needs seem to be more prevalent in our community than the wider population, and testing what can best help address this.
If we are talking about people serving in the Armed Forces now, their paths and experiences might well look different to people who’ve served in the past. Hopefully, some experiences will be more positive, if action to address issues like bullying, discrimination and harassment delivers impact, and if flexibility in career paths and support to manage family life while serving grows too. But there will be new challenges too, as the nature of the threats we face evolves, and our Armed Forces are required to rise to new requirements, in the wider context of ongoing pressures on public services and an uncertain economic outlook.
Over the years the profile of the community will change. The proportion of veterans who are under age 65 is getting closer to a half. As the WWII and National Service generation sadly pass on, the proportion of the overall population who have served, or are the partner of somebody who has served, will decrease. This will bring new challenges in recognition, understanding, and continuing to ensure we Remember those from previous generations.
It will be vital that policymakers and service providers seek to understand how needs and experiences are changing. And, for all the needs I have mentioned, our community also has enormous strengths and talents, and most people who have served, and their families, do very well and make a huge contribution throughout their lives. I think that will still stand for future generations too, and we need to celebrate and make the most of it!
7. Can you tell us about your favourite part of your current work with the Armed Forces Community and why?
Simply working with and for a community I care about and respect deeply. While we must not ignore the issues in the community, and things that can go wrong for people during or after Service, I feel overwhelmingly positive about working alongside many remarkable people whose resilience, humility - and humour! - is like nothing I’ve experienced elsewhere, and for an organisation where the level of dedication, pride, and passion is unparalleled. The unspoken understanding of shared, or relatable experiences, between many people in the community is hugely important on a personal level, too.
8. Given unlimited funding and time, what would be your dream project to undertake involving the Armed Forces community?
As well as funding and time, I’d also need willingness from lots of different organisations to joint problem-solve and design and deliver solutions together.
I’d like to set up a systematic way for the sector to maintain a well-evidenced picture of needs and strengths in our community, alongside an accurate picture of the extent to which policy and provision exists and is effective at meeting different needs for different people, including where demand for services and support mismatches expected need. A rolling gap analysis would help identify where changes are needed, and a programme of well-evaluated projects would be run to test and learn about the best solutions to filling gaps and meeting changing needs for different parts of our community – including how to prevent issues.
There are dozens of projects that would sit within that but with unlimited resource, a couple of the big ones would be: a programme of nationally representative surveys of our whole community – veterans, serving personnel, adult family members and child family members of each, and the bereaved community. These would be co-designed and ideally co-delivered with the community. And new longitudinal studies that track cohorts within our community over time, which could help answer questions around risk and protective factors, and the links between experiences pre, during, and post-Service that I mentioned above.
Many thanks to Ann Griffiths for sharing her insights.
Catch us next month for another interesting and informative interview with an expert from the Armed Forces Community.