Published on: 30 April 2024
The Pride in Veterans Standard demonstrates the Trust is a veteran-focused organisation with a proactive commitment to being inclusive and welcoming to LGBT+ Veterans, serving personnel, and their families.
George Eliot’s Armed Forces Staff Network Chair, George Taylor-Farren, spoke of the Trust’s pride in signing up: “We want to ensure that the whole veteran community is cared for with dignity and respect in our Trust. Signing up for PiVS is a key part of ensuring a sadly historically marginalised group can be confident in our care.
We will work with Fighting With Pride to develop the necessary requirement for LGBT+ Veteran support, so we recognise their service and help resolve challenges they face in their lives beyond military service.”
“We have very close relationship with the veterans in our community, this includes around 1,110 serving personnel, 48,000 veterans and 115,200 families representing about eight per cent of the region’s population. With many veterans and their families being proudly employed at George Eliot.
“We want them to know they can all feel confident in accessing our services and support, knowing that when they do, they will be treated with dignity, respect and understanding.”
Fighting With Pride is a charity who support LGBT+ Veterans, serving personnel and their families, particularly those who were affected by the ‘gay ban’, which was only ultimately lifted on in January 2000.
Before then, thousands of LGBT+ service personnel were removed or forced from service and abandoned, after serving with pride.
George Eliot’s LGBT+ Staff Network Chair, Sue Pike, added: “We are proud to be one of the first NHS Trust’s to sign up for the Pride in Veterans Standard and this is part of ourfurther commitment to the wider LGBT+ community.
“Accessing healthcare in our community should not be difficult for any group and we will continue to work to ensure that everyone is cared for with dignity and respect.”
The move follows the Trust being formally accredited as a Veteran Aware organisation by the Veterans Covenant Healthcare Alliance (VCHA) in 2023.
The accreditation recognises the quality of the service the Trust provides to the armed forces community, ensuring those who serve, or who have served, in the armed forces, and their families, are treated fairly.