Sight Scotland Veterans has achieved accreditation by the Pride in Veterans Standard (PiVS), in recognition of the charity’s commitment to delivering the highest standards for LGBTQ+ Veteran inclusion.
Fighting With Pride (FWP) is a trusted and respected LGBTQ+ military charity utilising lived experience and knowledge to support organisations seeking to develop or improve their LGBTQ+ welcome and support services.
The Pride in Veterans Standard (PiVS) was developed by Fighting with Pride and is open to any organisation that wishes to demonstrate its commitment to being inclusive and welcoming to LGBTQ+ Veterans, serving personnel, and their families.
Becoming part of PiVS highlights Sight Scotland and Sight Scotland Veterans' dedication to ensuring our service users feel confident in accessing the support they deserve. By sharing our values, we hope to reassure them that they will always be treated with kindness, respect, and understanding. We aim to offer services in a supporting and compassionate manner, tailored to meet the individual needs of our LGBTQ+ community.
As a PiVS-accredited organisation, Sight Scotland Veterans will work proactively to deliver the following commitments:
- Recruiting a Lead Consultant on inclusion and equality with our People and Culture Team.
- Utilising Unforgotten Forces training.
- Providing training on Dignity at Work, Sexual Harassment Awareness and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.
- Adhering to our Gender Transitioning at Work policy.
- Using the PiVS logo both internally and externally.
- Focusing impacts of this for LGBTQ+ Veterans when discussing mental health.
- Ensuring Veterans who are working for or with us are aware of our Financial Wellbeing Service and of compensation scheme, guidance documents and referral pathways for support.
- Working in partnership with Fighting With Pride, referring and signposting as appropriate.
- Offering all Veterans referred to our service a holistic needs assessment to allow us to tailor our visual impairment support to their unique needs.
- Signposting and referring to specialist providers as appropriate (e.g FWP, Combat Stress).
- Offering all Veterans referred to our service a holistic needs assessment to allow us to tailor our visual impairment support to their unique needs.
- Signposting and referring to specialist providers as appropriate (e.g FWP, Combat Stress).
- Utilising the mental health first aiders we have available for staff within the organisation, and training staff in mental health first aid training.
- Promoting the use of our Employee Assistance Programme to access counselling support.
- Ensuring all staff are aware of FWP and the partnership we have with Combat Stress.
- Adapting our organisational policies and other key documents so they are written in a way that is inclusive of non-binary people.
- Working where possible to provide gender neutral restrooms across all our buildings, in addition to existing separate men’s and women’s facilities.
- Changing Cascade system settings to enable more than two binary gender options.
- Ensuring all policies and procedures are inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community.
- Ensuring colleagues have awareness and understanding of “intersectionality” through Equality Diversity training.
- Treating Veterans as individuals tailoring support to the individual.
You can find out more about the accreditation at Pride in Veterans Standard.
