All Call Signs join us in the Studio, plus interview with street Artist My Dog Sighs

She Made Me Do It!

This week we are joined in the studio by S J & Dan from All Call Signs plus interview with International street artist My Dog Sighs. About All Call Signs ~ All Call Signs is a peer-to-peer communication app for Veterans and serving military personnel. Our chat service is manned by volunteers who have served in the forces and understand the stresses and struggles that come with service. All Call Signs was started by two veterans who suffer with mental health issues stemmed from their military career In the wake of the loss of their service friend Danny Johnston in May 2018, the pair put their heads together to provide what they saw as a gap in services available to our Armed Forces personnel. Dan Arnold Co-Founder of All Call Signs said “ there seemed to be a real disconnect with myself and my mental health practitioner, they didn't understand the language we use in the military and when I finally told them about my trauma they couldn't relate” It’s coming up to our 12 months since we started All Call Signs, and in that time we’ve managed to grow exponentially. Our Beacon application (for recovering at-risk members of the Armed Forces community troops when they go missing) has 7500+ users. We’ve launched 48 Beacon 'Alerts' - , this is a call to action that goes out to all subscribers. in order to ensure any veterans or service personnel at risk are recovered before making a poor decision. To date, 45'Beacons' have been resolved, 18 with direct intervention from a Beacon subscriber (either through aiding the police or actually finding them and bringing them to safety).. Our chat application is the largest peer support network in the UK with 470+ dedicated support listeners, all with a military background. We consistently see new chats of around 50-70 per week being started on the network and regularly signpost to other charities and organisations for everything from housing and work opportunities to therapy for mental health issues. One notable success story was an All Call Signs subscriber who works in a hotel, had served breakfast to one of our missing veterans that morning. The police were able to go and speak to him directly on the back of that information, which led to his safe return. We have been campaigning on behalf of veterans for improvements in the provisions surrounding mental health, this has seen us speaking directly with members of Parliament and even having a round table discussion with the Deputy Defence Secretary Gavin Jones MP to discuss our ideas and proposed solutions. We have seen positive change, including the Government announcing they will instruct coroners to record veteran suicide correctly; a key necessity to ensure better funding and awareness of veteran suicide. We are about to have a Halls debate scheduled in Parliament with Stephen Morgan MP where we have an opportunity to put our questions regarding veteran suicide to Tobias Elwood MP. What started out as a passion project in the wake of our friend’s suicide in May last year has grown into a valuable and much needed service with over 45,000 Facebook followers.It’s likely we will both be full-time with All Call Signs in the not too distant future and will still likely require more manpower to meet demand. None of this could happen without the fantastic support we have received from the public and the press - and for this we are massively thankful! Thank you for the part you have played.