145 (South) Brigade community engagement

145 (South) Brigade is the regional Army brigade covering Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and the Isle of Wight. Regional brigades work to provide all the home support the Army needs in order to enable them to live, train and deploy on operations; for example housing and recruitment. The counties within the 145 (South) Brigade area have over 36,000 personnel living and working in them; 15,000 Army personnel, 10,000 Royal Air Force and 11,000 Royal Navy.

What will this website tell you?
You can access the further pages of the 145 (South) Brigade community engagement website under related pages. These pages will cover the following topics:

• What the 145 (South) Brigade community engagement team do
• What the needs of the service families and veterans are.
• Which civilian partners we work with and why.
• Information and resources for learning about your Army.
• Partnership projects and methods of working specific to each county under Armed Forces in Hampshire or Oxfordshire.
• Our team news, and what events involving the Armed Forces are on near you.
• Research documents regarding the Armed Forces community, and other community engagement publications.  In particular you can access our knowledge database; a comprehensive list of those who provide services to the Armed Forces Community
• Information on where the service community can access services in the counties they live in who provides what?

What do we do?
The Community Engagement team aim to maximise opportunities to work with the local authorities and service providers; to support the service community, while meeting our partners aims. By working in partnership in this way both the military and greater community objectives can be better met.

The Military Community has unique needs and circumstances which will be discussed under Families and Veterans. A previous review of how these needs were being met suggested that it was often difficult to identify the armed forces community and because of that, difficult to know whether they were receiving the required standards of service. Therefore one of the important focuses for us is to build awareness of what the armed forces do on a daily basis, and what the unique armed forces community needs therefore are.

What is Community Engagement?
Community engagement can be achieved in a variety of ways, a number of which are summed up below:

• Presentations from soldiers who have been on operations, to local authorities and service providers.
• Meetings and projects with the local authorities and service providers, sharing information about the needs of our communities and our future plans for the local area.
• Military open days, homecoming parades, or an Armed Forces Day celebration
• Community usage of military facilities, for example sports fields.
• Presentations from the armed forces presentation teams about the RAF, the Royal Navy or the Army, to those who live in the local area or to local schools.

To learn more about we do for our families and veterans please follow the link under related pages.