The Sandbag Times Issue No:53

Accommodation Support
ALL CALL SIGNS
For Further Details:
Tel: 01746 833797/ 830191/ 872940
Fax: 01746 835774
Catterick Mil: 94731 2940
www.spaces.org.uk
www.riverside.org.uk
Email: spaces@riverside.org.uk
The Breakthrough New Project Which
Saves The Lives of Veterans
Throughout The UK
During last year, I had the
pleasure of speaking to a
veteran from my old battalion.
Daniel Arnold, a veteran from 2nd Bn
Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment
(the Tigers), told me of his intention
to start a ground breaking new
project where, in the case of veterans
go missing, an alert beacon is put in
place and is sent out through social
media. As you will read, this has
been a great success and has saved
lives.
It this month’s SBT, we are honoured
to feature All Call Signs and bring you
an update on the project by the guys
that have made it all happen.
All Call Signs
It’s coming up to our 6th months
since we started this venture
(already!), and in that time we’ve
managed to grow exponentially.
(either through aiding the police or
actually finding them and bringing
them to safety). Two Beacons have
unfortunately ended with bodies
being recovered and two are still
ongoing.
One notable success story was an All
Call Signs subscriber who works in a
hotel, had served breakfast to one of
our missing veterans that morning.
The police were able to go and speak
to him directly on the back of that
information, which led to his safe
return.
When we last spoke we had just
launched. Our Beacon Application
(for recovering at risk troops when
they go missing) had a very modest
300 subscribers and our chat
application was being manned by 30
volunteers.
Since then, Beacon has grown to
3,500+ users, our chat application is
the largest peer support network in
the UK with 330+ dedicated support
listeners, all with a military
background. We consistently see new
chats of around 50 per week being
started on the network and regularly
signpost to other charities and
organisation for everything from
housing and work opportunities to
therapy for mental health issues.
We’ve launched 22 Beacon Alerts,
this is a call to action that goes out to
all subscribers in order to ensure any
veterans or service personnel at risk
are recovered before making a poor
decision. To date, 18 Beacons have
been resolved, 8 with direct
intervention from a Beacon subscriber
We have been campaigning on behalf
of veterans for improvements in the
provisions surrounding mental health,
this has seen us speaking directly
with members of parliament and even
having a round table discussion with
the deputy defence secretary Gavin
Jones MP to discuss our ideas and
proposed solutions. We have seen
positive change, including the
government announcing they will
instruct coroners to record veteran
suicide correctly; a key necessity to
ensure better funding and awareness
of veteran suicide.
We have also forged strong ties and
working relationships with other
organisations working for veterans
such as The veterans Charity, Royal
British Legion and we will be working
closely in the future to improve
veteran’s lives. This approach
coupled with our podcast, PTSD and
me, which we started to talk about
what it is to live with PTSD and inform
people how they can manage and
support loved ones who may be
struggling too, has seen a huge
| 20 www.sandbagtimes.co.uk