Double success for Salford veterans’ research

Researchers at the University of Salford are celebrating on two fronts, with new funding awarded to support trauma-informed approaches to Ministry of Defence (MoD) welfare services and recently completed research receiving a prestigious award for its impact and innovation.

Forces in Mind Trust (FiMT) has awarded £249,204 to the University of Salford for a new project to provide an understanding of experience of MoD welfare services through a trauma-informed lens.

Trauma-informed approaches apply insights into trauma to the design of support services. Many UK government departments and organisations – including the DWP, Ministry of Justice, NHS and Social Security Scotland – are now embedding trauma-informed principles, and the MoD review of welfare services in 2023 recommended trauma-informed practice.

The new project, led by Lisa Scullion, Professor of Social Policy and Lead Professor for Social Sciences at the University of Salford, will seek to understand the current experiences of MoD welfare services from a trauma-informed perspective. Working specifically with the Armed Forces People Support Team, which supports a range of complex welfare issues, the project aims to help the MoD to understand how policy and practice can become more trauma-informed in a sustainable and evidence-driven way.

The project will actively work with the MoD to ensure that policy and practice changes can be sustainable and evidence-driven so that any changes made are to the benefit of ex-Service personnel in need of trauma-informed support.

Professor Scullion said: “We are grateful to FiMT for supporting this project. It builds on our existing impactful work with the DWP, which helped support enhancements to the DWP’s armed forces support and is currently supporting the DWP’s trauma informed approaches integration programme. We are really excited to be able to use that learning to support the MoD to look at the value of trauma-informed approaches and hope that we can help the wellbeing of both service users and staff.”

James Greenrod, Head of Armed Forces People Support, Ministry of Defence, said: “We are delighted to be part of this important initiative, which will provide valuable lessons to us in how we support those whose work exposes them to difficult topics and materials.I look forward to the outcomes of this project, enabling us to better support those who support others and generating useful insights for future policy and practice.”

Further success for the research team came when their long-running Sanctions, Support and Service Leavers (SSSL) project was recently named as the winner of the FiMT Research Centre 2025 Impact and Innovation Award.

This award is presented to an innovative research project with demonstratable real-world impact and transformative outcomes which benefits ex-Service personnel and their families by advancing evidence and developing policy and practice.

The SSSL project, funded by FiMT, has been led by the University of Salford since 2017. It represents the first and only substantive piece of work examining veterans’ experience of the UK benefits system.

On receiving the award, Lisa said: “We’re so thrilled to receive this prestigious award. Over the lifetime of our SSSL project, the research has led to considerable progress in improving veterans’ experiences of the benefits system, and we look forward to continuing our engagement with the DWP to help ensure that the specific needs of veterans continue to be recognised and responded to.”

The FiMT Research Centre said: “We are delighted to award this to the Sanctions, Support and Service Leavers (SSSL) project, led by Professor Lisa Scullion at the University of Salford. We are awarding the SSSL project in recognition of the high quality and impact of this research, the key policy changes that have come directly from this work and the creative and accessible approach to dissemination. Congratulations to the SSSL team.”