Pension4army the army shop is now live the idea of the shop is to raise money for the charities

we support on this website so if you do decide to buy then you will be helping our heros

so go have a browse at www.pension4army.com

Mission Statement for Parcels43 Supporting Our Troops

Improve conditions for troops /  Hope to Change negative public opinion of our troops / Support troops and their families

Our Heroes - Forsaken but not Forgotten

Les earned his living as a bare knuckle fighter and soon found himself on the wrong side of the law. In 1993 he spent months in solitary confinement carefully planning his own suicide.

In 1982 L/Cpl Standish received the Military Medal - the third highest award for gallantry in the British Army. Ten years later his life unravelled. He became a forgotten hero of the Falklands War - a casualty of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

PTSD continued to affect him and as the 25th anniversary of the Falkland's War approached, he found himself preparing to drive his car over the edge of Orme head to end his nightmares once and for all. But Les is one of the lucky ones. He was able to attend a unique new training programme where he learned how to release the symptoms of PTSD. Since completing that training in March 2007, Les has had only one nightmare, which he quickly handled using the techniques he had learned.

A Growing Problem

No one knows the true extent of PTSD in our veteran population but the evidence we do have is alarming. According to British research 9% of people who experience combat develop late onset PTSD. 30,000 British personnel served in the Falklands war, so as many as 2,700 of these veterans could now be suffering from PTSD. One fact we can be sure of is that over 300 Falklands veterans have committed suicide - more than were killed in the fighting!

Initial indications from Iraq suggested that 2% of regular soldiers and 4% of reservists developed PTSD. Subsequent review of the data increased these figures to 4% and 6% respectively. It now seems clear that more of our forces are likely to suffer psychological injury than physical injury as a result of combat.

Alcohol and drug abuse are common coping mechanisms for PTSD sufferers adversely affecting the life of the veteran. Similarly violent outbursts, emotional shutdown and social dysfunction affect the lives of their family and friends and their community as a whole. This places a major burden on social services, the health service, charities and the legal system.

The National Ex-Services Association indicates as many as 7% of the UK prison population (over 6,000 prisoners) are veterans. "Vets in Prison" estimate the number to be as high 10-11%. They also reported that 95% of ex-military prisoners are former soldiers or marines (the ones most likely to have experienced recent combat).

PoppyScotland conducted a four-week survey of the users of hostels and day centres and found that 12% of the homeless were ex-military. A conservative estimate of the number of homeless in the UK is 300,000, so on any given night more than 36,000 British veterans are homeless.

The statistics from the US paint an even more alarming picture. The journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology reported that 3% of males and 8% of females in the Gulf War had PTSD on returning to the US. This doubled over the next 24 months. In 2003, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that 16% of those returning from Iraq had PTSD. The Pentagon mental health taskforce 2007 report states that the incidence of psychological trauma is rising with prolonged combat duty: 38% of regular soldiers, 31% of marines, 49% of National Guard and 43% of marine reservists had symptoms of post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, and other psychological problems within three months of returning from active duty.

The Coming Crisis

Over 130,000 British service personnel have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and the operational tempo shows little sign of change. So if the conservative British figure of 9% incidence of PTSD is correct we will soon see as many as 12,000 service personnel and veterans develop PTSD. Nationally we do not have the capability or capacity for handling this level of combat related delayed onset, complex PTSD.

A New Approach - Bringing Hope to PTSD Casualties

Les Standish was lucky - he received the PTSD recovery training as part of a pilot programme which provided relief from the symptoms for 80% of people who completed the training. After a year of refinement and improvement we're now ready to move from a small pilot to large scale delivery. It costs £4,000 to provide 6 months of PTSD recovery training and social rehabilitation support to a PTSD casualty and their spouse/partner - that's half the cost of six weeks of respite care and only 20% of the cost of a month long stay at the Priory! So we now need to raise the funds to help, P3 the social inclusion charity, move this programme into full production.
You can see more of Les’ story here.

In the spring of 2009 we will be running a year long large scale programme and clinical observation study with Nottingham University. This will allow 104 veterans to gain relief from their PTSD symptoms and also provide an independently validated study which we need to show to the NHS and MoD for this programme to be accepted. We need to raise £416,000 to help 104 veterans and their families overcome the nightmare of PTSD. Once this is complete we will expand our service to be delivering PTSD recovery and resilience training to 250 casualties per year. To do this we will need to raise £1,000,000 each year from charitable donations to fund these programmes. And this need will continue until the MoD and NHS accept this training as a credible solution to the problem of PTSD.

Help Us to Help Our Veterans

You can help us help our veterans in several ways.

Through direct donations - sponsor former RAF Officer Steve Bradbury who will be running the Dublin marathon – sponsor him for just for £1 per mile www.justgiving.com/SteveBradbury and this will pay for one day of the 6 month programme. Groups could sponsor a veteran for £4,000 for the full programme and a larger organization could sponsor an eight person training course for £32,000.

By raising awareness - if you know of any veterans suffering from PTSD please let them know about this new training programme. Also we are looking for a number of celebrities who will help us promote this programme, so if you know anyone who would support this please help us contact them.

Identifying Corporate Social Responsibility funds - to raise £1,000,000 a year will take more than the generosity of the public. We will need help from corporate social responsibility funds. So if you know any CSR fund managers who are supportive of our military and veterans please help us contact them.

Our veterans did their bit for us - now it's our turn to do something for them!

About P3

Our purpose as an organisation is to operate services and create opportunities for vulnerable people of all ages that offer effective and long lasting routes out of social / economic exclusion and homelessness. Specialising in, support for people recovering from mental ill health, P3 has a 25 year track record of operating a range of services. With a total of 16 sites across the UK and over 170 staff working every day to provide support to over 1700 people a week, P3 is truly a diverse organisation with services tailored to meet the needs of our service users.

Recently recognised through a variety of national awards and standards including Number 1 in the Sunday Times Best Company 2007 Awards, UK Charity Awards Best Charity 2005 and winner of the National Training Awards 2006, P3 is continuously striving to develop it's services and ensure that where there are gaps in services, it is able to develop new innovative models to ensure that people get the support that they need.

David Walters


Please try our free PTSD self awareness test.