Pilot scheme tackles isolation for RAF Lossiemouth families

A NEW RAF Lossiemouth scheme is supporting serving personnel and their families overcome the isolation that can often come with station life.

The RAF Benevolent Fund launched the two-year pilot last month at four RAF stations, including RAF Lossiemouth, RAF Odiham, RAF Leeming and RAF Honington.

Veronica "Vron" Young has been hired to lead the service at Lossiemouth. Vron most recently worked as a HIVE information support officer at Leuchars Station. Prior to that, she served as an airwaves representative, airwaves overseas manager and airwaves publicity manager at RAF Akrotiri and Episkopi.

Vron has held various voluntary roles, including musical director of Leuchars Military Wives Choir. She is a qualified caseworker, in-service volunteer co-ordinator and associate trainer for the Armed Forces charity SSAFA. She was also awarded a British Empire Medal in 2015 for her services to the Leuchars service and community.

Vron said: "My calling in life is most definitely helping people.

"As someone who has experienced first-hand all the challenges that come with marrying into the services, moving away from home and your family and friends, I feel naturally drawn to helping improve the support for families and serving personnel.

"I’m looking forward to working with the welfare and community support team at RAF Lossiemouth to help break down any barriers that are causing serving personnel or their family members to feel isolated or excluded."

The scheme aims to provide tangible support to members of the serving RAF family who are affected by social isolation and loneliness, and will look to enable serving RAF personnel to engage in their communities through the development of working relationships, as part of station community support teams, and through clubs and activities.

Damian Pinel, RAF projects manager at the RAF Benevolent Fund, said: "It’s not just veterans and older members of the RAF family that suffer from social isolation and loneliness. Station life can be difficult to adjust to for many members of the serving RAF community, so we wanted to offer greater support to those who might be struggling.

"This project complements other initiatives we’ve launched that promote positive mental wellbeing, such as the listening and counselling service and group wellbeing breaks."

Earlier this year, the RAF Benevolent Fund launched a community engagement worker scheme to help older RAF veterans get involved in their local communities. The scheme was launched in response to research carried out by the fund which highlighted these challenges as issues which most concerned the older generation of RAF veterans.

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