NHS chiefs forced to rely on £1m handout from Help For Heroes to aid traumatised veterans stuck on nine-month waiting list
The charity stepped in to try to slash the waiting list for war veterans who need life-saving counselling
STRUGGLING NHS chiefs have been forced to rely on massive charity bailouts to cut a NINE month wait to treat traumatised troops, The Sun can reveal.
Frontline doctors are so cash-strapped they have been forced to go cap in hand for the emergency measure to fund life-saving counselling.
Forces charity Help For Heroes has shelled out more than £1m in the last year alone in grants to tackle PTSD and other mental health conditions that have afflicted Iraq and Afghan vets.
The Sun’s revelation sparked fresh uproar among MPs last night, who dubbed it “quite extraordinary” that the Government is again failing its struggling war heroes.
It comes just hours after PM Theresa May personally championed Mental Health Awareness Week in the Commons during PMQs.
Help For Heroes awarded a £518,000 grant to Veterans’ NHS Wales, £431,109 to Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, and a further £178,000 to vets mentoring scheme Change Step Project.
The charity agreed to open up its pot from funds raised by big-hearted Brits after hearing about black spot areas such as Swansea, Newport and North Wales where traumatised veterans have to wait three quarters of a year after an initial assessment to start psychological therapy.
But the bailout there has only managed to reduce the waiting time by three months, forcing vets to suffer on for six months from diagnosis without help.
The charity’s boss last night called on Chancellor Philip Hammond to urgently increase mental units’ funding.
Help for Heroes Chief Executive Mel Waters said: “NHS doctors and nurses do a fantastic frontline job with the resources available to them, but our work with individual Trusts has shown that huge improvements can be made if only the Treasury would get the money to where it’s really needed.
“We believe that those who have put their lives on the line for us deserve a fair deal, and that means getting the help they need, right now.”
Former Army officer-turned Tory MP Johnny Mercer last night called on Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to step in.
Angry Mr Mercer said: “For a charity to have to bail out a Government service as essential as this is quite extraordinary.
“It should absolutely not be for the third sector to provide basic mental health care for those who served their country.
“This is simply not a sustainable model; people who donated to H4H did not expect their money to be used in this way. We must proceed very carefully along this route, and I will be speaking to Jeremy Hunt personally on the issue.”
In what has been dubbed a ticking time bomb, King’s College London have estimated that at least 66,000 who served the forces between 1991 and 2014 might suffer from mental health or physical health problems, the majority of them mental health.
The Department of Health refused to comment on the funding crisis when approached by The Sun last night.