Support for Veterans

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Social Justice – in the Senedd at 1:55 pm on 30 June 2021.

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Photo of Darren Millar Darren Millar Conservative 1:55, 30 June 2021

Thank you for that response, Deputy Minister. Last week to mark Armed Forces Week, I took a visit to Adferiad Recovery's headquarters in Colwyn Bay in my constituency. Adferiad Recovery is a service provider to veterans through its Change Step programme, which has operated now for over a decade. Over 3,000 individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder have been supported by that particular programme, and they have provided 57,000 hours of one-to-one peer mentoring support. The cost of that service over the decade has been around £5 million, yet only £40,000 of that has come from the Welsh Government, and yet that is in spite of the fact that for every £1 invested in the service, academic research has shown that it saves the public purse £7 in return. Can I ask the Welsh Government whether it will look at the resources that it makes available to support veterans in Wales, and to see whether there's an opportunity here to invest to provide more sustainable funding to the Change Step programme, which of course operates across Wales and has benefited so many of my constituents and those of the Deputy Minister and others in this Chamber?