SSAFA The Armed Forces Charirty is the UK’s oldest Armed Forces charity, with some 5,500 volunteers in its networks of branches and committees providing practical, emotional and financial support to anyone who has ever served and their dependants.

SSAFA’s Health & Social Care Department is the charity’s commercial arm, which provides direct support to serving personnel and their families in the United Kingdom and overseas, through SSAFA Family Health Services.

More than 100,000 people are helped every year, including currently serving personnel and veterans. Additional specialist services include housing; adoption; veterans in the criminal justice system; a confidential helpline for serving personnel, victim and witness support; short breaks and mentoring.

SSAFA ensures that all activities carried out by the organisation comply with relevant environmental legislation.

We are committed to the prevention of pollution and aim continuously to improve our environmental performance through the support and involvement of all employees and volunteers and any other interested parties.

We aim to:

• reduce the need for business travel by encouraging staff to use video conferencing facilities whenever they can.
• reduce our carbon footprint by asking employees and volunteers to use public transport wherever possible. Where car travel is unavoidable, car-sharing is encouraged.
• actively reduce waste through our principle of preventing, re-using and recycling all our office waste.
• maximise efficient use of natural resources through office best practice guidelines.
• reduce the amount of energy consumed during office hours by efficiently using equipment and operating our ‘switch off when not in use’ policy.
• encourage our clients, suppliers and stakeholders to adopt our environmental principles in their own organisations; and
• review our environmental and resource efficiency policies annually to see how we can make further improvements.

In addition to the aims above, SSAFA’s Health & Social Care Department is committed to:

• further reducing our use of vehicles by coordinating home visits to patients/clients in a geographically efficient manner.