Discussion: This presentation will highlight the development of an empowering service entitled Change Step and Listen In. The former is an All Wales Veteran Peer Mentoring Service providing support through a shared ‘veteran’ identity that promotes trust and understanding for military veterans. Subsequently, Listen In was established to provide support for family and carers of veterans in Wales, through a comprehensive service addressing the role that veterans’ families have in empowering a sustained recovery of veterans.
Through the development of these services the author argues that the concept of ‘empowerment’ has enabled the development of ideas and values that support healthy relationships, a sense of belonging and a foundation for individual and community success. These peer-support services create this ‘empowerment’ through a restorative culture by the use of core values that allow for the development of a healthy dialogue that is pro-active in creating strong, productive and cohesive pathways to repairing lives within the communities of Wales.
Biography: Richard Mottershead is a senior lecturer of mental health nursing at The University of Chester, United Kingdom. He is currently a fellow of the british higher education academy as well as a registered nurse tutor with the nursing and midwifery council in the UK. Regionally, he is a visiting lecturer at the Ras Al Khaimah Medical and Health Sciences University based within the United Arab Emirates. He has worked clinically in a range of mental health settings within UK, Middle East, Central Africa and Eastern Europe as well as teaching across a broad spectrum of nursing and healthcare programmes. His Ph.D. studies centre on the lived experiences of military veterans within the criminal justice system.
