Rebuilding Trust and Transforming Veteran Wellbeing: Discovery Workshops Reveal Key Findings
The recent national Discovery and Insight Workshops, spanning all states and territories, have delivered powerful interim findings on what Australia’s new veteran wellbeing agency must address. Over 44 workshops gathered insights from veterans, current serving members, families, ESOs, and service providers.
“The outcome is clear, the system needs reform, and trust must be rebuilt.”
Core Barriers Identified
The workshops confirmed the serious and often systemic challenges many veterans and families face:
Loss of identity and purpose after military service.
A fragmented and complex support system, making access to care difficult and disjointed.
Poor coordination between agencies, especially between Defence, DVA, and community services.
Inadequate support during transitions, including employment, housing, and reintegration.
Lack of tailored support for families, particularly spouses, children, and carers.
For regional areas like the Riverina, these problems are amplified. Participants reported being “priced out” of care, confused by red tape, and repeatedly traumatised by having to retell their stories to different agencies.
What Trust Looks Like
Veterans and families defined trust in four clear terms:
Transparency. Clear communication and honesty.
Empathy. Understanding lived experiences and showing care.
Respect. Recognising the journey of every veteran.
Follow-through. Doing what’s promised and showing results.
Critical Transition Touchpoints
From Day 1 of enlistment to end-of-life support, veterans and families identified multiple transition points that require better, more connected services. Career changes, family relocation, health crises, and retirement all demand seamless, lifelong support.
Enablers and Solutions
Participants urged the new agency to:
Focus on early intervention and prevention, starting while veterans are still serving.
Avoid duplicating existing services and instead fill the gaps and connect systems.
Embrace family-centred care, continuity of care, and culturally informed support.
Create Veterans’ and Families’ Hubs as trusted, community-based spaces for connection, purpose, and access to care.
Game Changers Proposed
Four transformative ideas were highlighted:
1. Rebuild Trust Through a National Promise
A values-driven mission to support veteran wellbeing "from cradle to grave," backed by action and accountability.
2. Independence and True Collaboration
A governance structure that brings Defence, DVA, community providers, and mainstream services together with clear goals and shared accountability.
3. Veterans and Families Connect Model
A new service architecture built on trust, empowerment, choice, lived experience, and trauma-informed care.
4. Community-Based Hubs
Local, peer-led centres like Pro Patria can become the beating heart of the new system—integrated, responsive, and built on real-life experience.
Where Pro Patria Stands
These findings reaffirm the Pro Patria Centre’s approach: holistic, peer-led, and integrated support rooted in lived experience. As momentum builds nationally, we remain committed to being a model Hub, demonstrating how local solutions can lead national change.
