Veteran Policy: from concepts to practical solutions

Publication date: October 22, 2025

Author: Olenka Heletiuk, Communications Expert, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of “HLUZD”

The topic of supporting veterans and their families is becoming one of the key issues for state and local policy. There is a great demand in society for creating a comprehensive system of rehabilitation, adaptation, and integration of veterans into community life. In response to this demand, the Legal Development Network, together with the humanitarian organization People in Need and funded by the Czech Development Agency, is implementing an advocacy campaign for changes to veteran policy at the local and national levels. In August 2025, the Network’s partner organization Nonviolent Peaceforce held a coordination meeting with organizations dealing with veteran issues. We share the key findings that were voiced.

A New Approach to Veteran Policy—Coordination Instead of Duplication

Today, the key task is to transition from declarative programs to real support tools that will cover:

• Medical and psychological care
• Educational opportunities and retraining
• Access to housing
• Development of veteran entrepreneurship

Veteran policy should become comprehensive, cross-sectoral, and responsive to the needs of both veterans and their families.

A serious problem today is the duplication of efforts by different structures. Many government bodies, public organizations, and international partners collect the same data and create similar products.

“Why do we go one after another and collect the same data? Let’s unite and create one product”—this is the main idea that prevailed during the meeting of organizations dealing with veteran reintegration into communities.

The absence of a unified coordination system leads to communities, as well as veterans and their families themselves, not always understanding who is responsible for what, and assistance to veterans becomes fragmented.

Problems with Registration and Status

During the introduction and discussion of the issues, activists working in Mykolaiv Oblast on resolving veteran issues specifically emphasized the difficulty of maintaining accurate statistics. This is due to the fact that community registries are closed, and there is no precise data on the number of veterans living in community territories. This complicates program planning and resource allocation.

Moreover, the official definition of veteran status creates additional obstacles: even an active servicemember has a combat participant (UBD) certificate. This does not align with international approaches, where “veteran” specifically means a former servicemember, and hinders effective cooperation with humanitarian organizations.

Meeting participants emphasized: support should concern not only veterans but also their family members. Among the priorities is psychological assistance for children and military spouses, as families often become the “first line of support” for a veteran.

Successful examples included professional “reboot” programs, where veterans receive a new specialty or microgrants to develop their own business. This allows not only ensuring economic independence but also restoring a sense of personal significance.

Personnel Challenge

Another systemic problem is the shortage of veteran support specialists. Today, Ukraine trains about 300 such specialists per year, while the need reaches thousands.

According to experts’ calculations, even in ten years, this training pace will not be sufficient to close the personnel deficit. Therefore, meeting participants—public activists actively engaged in veteran issues—emphasized the need to popularize the veteran support specialist as a profession. They called for conducting information campaigns and involving more young people, including veterans, in training.

Information as the Key to Services

Meeting participants identified access to information as one of the most important problems. A significant portion of veterans do not have constant internet access and do not use mobile applications, including “Diia,” so online information cannot be the only source of communication.

Therefore, the following become particularly important:

• Printed reference guides with basic information that can be handed to a veteran personally
• Hotlines and specialist consultations where a person receives live advice
• Posters and leaflets in hospitals and administrative service centers

One practical solution should be creating a unified guide for veterans. Based on it, posters, leaflets, and electronic products can be developed and distributed in communities, hospitals, and military hospitals.

Another proposal is establishing information exchange between communities. If a servicemember ends up in another city or oblast, they should easily obtain information about available services. Memoranda between cities can be signed for this purpose.

Participants also emphasized the importance of feedback with medical institutions so that hospital administrators know about veterans’ problems and can respond to them in real time.

One proposal was to create a platform for organizations working in the field of veteran policy, which would allow identifying gaps and coordinating efforts in medicine, rehabilitation, and social adaptation. Cooperation between government structures, communities, and public organizations can become the key to building quality veteran policy.

The material was prepared by the Legal Development Network in partnership with the humanitarian organization People in Need and with financial support from the Czech Development Agency.

The conclusions and interpretations of collected information presented in the material are solely the position of the authors and do not reflect the opinions of the donors and project partners.

Фото обкладинки: https://depositphotos.com/

Отримайте поглиблену консультацію через чатбот LawLink

If you have notices an error on the web-site, please, highlight the text and press ctrl-enter.