Veterans Foundation is proud to support the Defence Medical Welfare Service (DMWS). DMWS exists to ensure that servicemen and women have the support they need when they go through illness, injury or hardship.
What does the Defence Medical Welfare Service do?
The DMWS was founded in 1943 and since it began has helped over 1 million people who needed support during their time of need. The charity helps soldiers, veterans and other frontline staff during and after their hospital treatment. DMWS has a team of highly trained welfare officers who are tasked with looking after specific patients and helping them overcome the challenges they face.
Often Armed Forces Personnel and veterans can get treatment but during and after treatment their life becomes unbalanced and stress, isolation and panic can disrupt their lives. DMWS provides practical and emotional support during these times to help people and their families get through whatever rough patch they face.
A veteran explains how the Defence Medical Welfare Service helped him: “The service provided to my wife and myself by DMWS was superb. In my 30-year career, I have never experienced such top quality welfare support. Nothing was too challenging, the commitment exemplar.”
DMWS operates across the UK and overseas so that no British Armed Forces or ex-service personnel need to face treatment and recovery by themselves. The practical services provided by DMWS include hospital and home visits, help to resolve care issues, providing clothing and toiletries and providing welfare officers to attend appointments etc. with patients.
How has Veterans’ Foundation helped the DMWS?
Grant funds DMWS received from Veterans’ Foundation funded a new data collection system. This new system helps to effectively store the data of DMWS service users to enable more effective record keeping. This leads to a better understanding of the issues specific service users are facing and how they can be assisted best. The new system makes sure that all the key data for each patient is captured.
Defence Medical Welfare Service now equips all of their Welfare Officers with new IT kits that use software directly funded by Veterans’ Foundation.
Welfare Officers from DMWS explain how the new systems have helped them excel at their support: “The new system has improved project management, data analysis and enables us the measure service provision at our fingertips.” “The new system has enabled us to immediately identify areas of concern and how partnership working has improved the outcomes for the service user.”
