Armed Forces Community Support & Veterans Treated

Reference: 25-26255

Date response sent: 19/09/2025

Details of enquiry

1. Inpatient treatment pathway for veterans: Does your Trust have a dedicated inpatient treatment pathway specifically for veterans? If so, please provide details.
2. Veteran staff employed by the Trust: How many members of staff currently employed by your Trust identify as veterans?

a. Please provide this information broken down by gender.

3. Veterans treated within the Trust in the last 12 months: How many veterans have been treated by your Trust in the last 12 months?

a. Please provide a breakdown by division/service (e.g., Adult Mental Health, Forensic services, etc.),

b. and specify whether treatment was provided in inpatient or community care settings where possible.

4. Support for the Armed Forces community: What specific support does your Trust offer for the Armed Forces community (including serving personnel, reservists, veterans, and their families)?

Response sent

1. Inpatient treatment pathway for veterans: Does your Trust have a dedicated inpatient treatment pathway specifically for veterans? If so, please provide details.

No.  The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust does not provide inpatient services.

2. Veteran staff employed by the Trust: How many members of staff currently employed by your Trust identify as veterans?

One

a. Please provide this information broken down by gender.

One male member of staff.

3. Veterans treated within the Trust in the last 12 months: How many veterans have been treated by your Trust in the last 12 months?

7 veterans have been treated within the last 12 months.

a. Please provide a breakdown by division/service (e.g., Adult Mental Health, Forensic services, etc.)

b. and specify whether treatment was provided in inpatient or community care settings where possible.

Outpatient Settings (See our response to Question 1 above)

4. Support for the Armed Forces community: What specific support does your Trust offer for the Armed Forces community (including serving personnel, reservists, veterans, and their families)?

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust has achieved Veteran Aware Accreditation with the Veterans Covenant Healthcare Alliance.

Whilst we are not directly commissioned to provide bespoke services for veterans, all of our clinical and educational services are available to the Armed Forces Community.

In addition, we have developed a platform known as ‘NCL Waiting Room’ to support self-help and service access for the Armed Forces Community as demonstrated by the following links:

• Op COURAGE | Waiting Room
• The Ripple Pond | Waiting Room

Notes on our response to Question 3 above.

*         A listing and explanation of the Trust’s services is publicly available on our website and may be reached via this link:  Services – Tavistock and Portman

≤5       We have masked low numbers with the symbol ‘≤5’, which indicates where numbers are equal to 5 or less than 5. The Trust follows the NHS England standard, established to not provide exact data where the numbers are smaller than 6 as this may lead to identification of individuals.

The Trust has engaged exemption from releasing exact low numbers in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) Section 40(2) (Information which constitutes the personal data of any person other than the applicant, where disclosure would not be permitted under GDPR, thereby breaching GDPR Principle (a): Lawfulness, fairness and transparency.

As this is an absolute exemption, we do not have to apply the Public Interest Test when engaging this exemption.

The Trust recognises a high level of interest from public in how the public purse has been spent on services, and must balance this against disclosure of any small numbers and the years in which these instances occurred, which – whilst not directly identifying individuals, would nevertheless give rise to a disclosure of personal data, as follows:

• Although the time period, (last 12 months), alone, is not personal data, we have also to consider whether other information that is already available, or may become available, to any member of the public, could be combined with the data requested so as to enable identification of the individual(s) concerned.
• There is a high chance of recognition/identification of particular individuals/patients by fellow patients/colleagues and/or others from the low numbers.
• This masking of low numbers is not a just a question of considering the means reasonably likely to be used by general public, but also the means likely to be used by a determined person with a particular reason to want to identify individuals from data in the public domain now or in the future, and/or gained from other sources.