Learning Forward
SVWA uses a model of learning that brings organisations together to collectively understand how our work makes a difference in people’s lives. We use the results to adapt our priorities so we can better create the conditions for veterans and their families to thrive in Scotland.
Here you’ll find more information on how we use Learning Labs as well as tools and templates you can use in your own organisation.
SVWA as a National Learning Alliance
Scotland’s Veterans Wellbeing Alliance is not simply a network of organisations.
It is a national learning alliance.
It exists to bring together organisations, data, lived experience and practice to answer one core question:
What difference does this work actually make in people’s lives?
…and then do something with that insight.
From the outset, the Alliance has focused on creating the conditions for veterans and their families to live well and thrive in communities across Scotland .
But rather than relying on strategy documents or reporting frameworks alone, SVWA is building a learning infrastructure.
From Monitoring to Collective Learning: Learning Lab Report
This report documents the Scotland’s Veterans Wellbeing Alliance (SVWA) approach to collective learning through Learning Labs and Action Learning Cycles. The Alliance was developed and is nurtured through the intentional use of the Incite (Irvine Fitzpatrick, 2019: Irvine Fitzpatrick et al 2021; Irvine Fitzpatrick and Matthews-Smith, 2025) model to guide the creation, formulation and enhancement of this intersectoral partnership. Scotland’s Veterans Wellbeing Alliance (SVWA) envisions a future whereby focusing on people, places, and pathways, we support and empower veterans and their families to live well and thrive in communities that recognise and embrace their knowledge, skills, and potential.
- This report therefore documents what collective learning looked like in practice through one Action Learning Cycle. The report has three purposes:
- It sets out the Alliance’s overall approach to monitoring, evaluative practice and learning.
- It illustrates how Learning Labs and Action Learning Cycles operate in practice, including how data was collected, analysed and discussed collectively.
- It invites organisations, funders and policy makers to consider how collective learning approaches might strengthen understanding and support better decision making across the wider veterans’ support system.
The specific Action Learning Cycle explored in this report focused on a simple but important question:
What brings veterans and their families to first contact our organisations, and how do they find us?
Understanding this question provides insight into how veterans and families navigate the support landscape, how trust is built between communities and organisations, and how different organisations contribute to the wider ecosystem of support.
Social Value in Scotland’s Veterans Wellbeing Alliance: Practice, Research and Responsibility
From its inception, the Scotland’s Veterans Wellbeing Alliance has sought to move beyond counting activity and towards understanding impact.
Across the voluntary and public sectors, organisational reporting has traditionally focused on measures such as numbers of sessions delivered, events held, referrals made or people supported. These measures are important. They help demonstrate the scale and reach of activity. They can provide insight into operational performance and service demand. But they do not adequately describe what it takes for veterans and their families to live well and thrive.
Much of the work undertaken by organisations across the Alliance is relational, long-term and shaped by the complex realities of people’s lives. The effects of that work are often felt in areas such as confidence, stability, belonging, mental health, social connection and the ability to participate meaningfully in family and community life.
These forms of change are often gradual, rarely occurring in neat linear sequences. They frequently emerge through sustained relationships between practitioners, peers, families and communities. Capturing this kind of impact requires a different evaluative lens.
Scotland’s Veterans Wellbeing Alliance was created not simply as a network of organisations, but as a space for shared learning across the veterans’ support landscape. Members bring together different forms of expertise, experience and practice, working in complementary ways to support veterans and their families.
The Social Value work presented in this report forms one part of that broader learning effort:
What difference does this work make, and how can we evidence that difference rigorously and responsibly?
Before presenting any financial valuations, it is important to explain the approach the Alliance has taken, the principles guiding the work and the methodological choices involved.
