Organisations along the Yorkshire Coast working with former armed forces personnel are being offered specialist training designed to foster better understanding and engagement with the military community.
The ‘Military Matters’ course is being arranged by Scarborough’s Veterans Hub. The one-day training initiative aims to help break down barriers to engagement between civilians and members of the Armed Forces Community.
Dr Lori Boul, Veterans Hub Lead, highlighted the crucial need for this specialist training, noting that misunderstandings often arise from differences in communication styles.
Dr Boul said:
"The Military Matters training day is for civilians who work with veterans because there's an awful lot of civilians out there who do not understand how to engage with veterans.
We know their language can be quite blunt and they can appear to be aggressive when they're not. They're just forthright and outspoken. And civilians don't always understand that.
When a practitioner is working with someone, they come in and they are being very grumpy and whatever, they think, 'Oh, they've had a bad day.' But if they know they're a veteran, they automatically tend to think PTSD and yet veterans are no more likely to have PTSD than the civilian population.
So it's just them understanding the military mindset as it were and the way military identity impacts on the way they communicate and engage with people."
The impact of military identity also extends to the workplace, creating difficulties when transitioning into civilian employment. Dr Boul explained that employers need to grasp these differences:
"In a work situation, military personnel have great deal of difficulty understanding you work 9 to 5 and if the job isn't finished at 5:00, you go home because that doesn't happen in the military.
And so there's a way of employers understanding when they come into a civilian employment the differences that they have to get used to.
Military personnel are used to being given very specific orders on what to do and how to do it. And they don't tend to argue back. And when they get into civilian life, the orders can be a bit vaguer, they're not orders, they're directions, often suggestions, and you are expected to argue back if you don't understand something.
So even for the very large employers who do employ ex-military personnel it's very important for them to understand what the differences are and how to engage."
The 'Military Matters' training day is scheduled for Thursday, 27th November 2025. The event will be hosted locally by St. Catherine's, which Dr Boul noted is "very kindly hosting it for us because they've got some wonderful training facilities". The cost is £115 per person, including lunch, with funded places also available.
The training has run previously and "it's gone down very well indeed," according to Dr Boul. She also mentioned that if they do not secure enough participants this time, "it'll go again in the new year".
Local Support and National Context
The initiative is particularly relevant given national insights into veteran support. A survey conducted by the Office of Veterans Affairs, published in July 2025, indicated that more than three quarters (78%) of veterans surveyed felt the government does not do enough for them.
Furthermore, accessing support can be challenging, as nearly half (44%) of those who had accessed services reported finding it difficult. This difficulty may stem from the fact that over 50% of respondents preferred making contact in-person at local service hubs. The Office of Veterans Affairs survey also noted the importance of staff having expert (32%) and military (25%) experience.
In this context, Scarborough's Veterans Hub provides a critical service. The Hub asserts that it offers the only dedicated physical space for veterans south of Catterick, east of York and north of Hull, where former service personnel can contact the organisation in person and receive support from people with military experience.
There are more details about the hub at https://www.ageuk.org.uk/northyorkshirecoastmoors/our-services/the-veterans-hub-d6d7bd1a-190e-ee11-a81c-6045bd94e88e/
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