Wow! What a year! None of us will ever forget 2020.

How we watched with fascination and astonishment as a mystery new virus started spreading like wildfire in China and the authorities there locked down the whole city of Wuhan. And yet within weeks as the virus spread, a global pandemic was declared and our routine daily lives were changed for many, many months.

Despite the enormous challenges posed by CV-19 in this dramatic year, I am delighted to report that HighGround has pressed on and continued to deliver its much needed charitable services throughout. The delivery of these services has been far from normal but has been made possible due to agility, imagination and sheer grit of our small team who have overcome every obstacle thrown in their way to keep the show on the road for those in need.

Our Horticultural Therapy work at DMRC Stanford Hall continues to provide wonderful rehabilitative care to our military patients and Jane and Andy have worked wonders in helping maximise patient benefit throughout, maintain and improve our facilities (which is not always easy in dealing when with the Defence Infrastructure Organisation…!) and foster ever deeper links with the other therapeutic teams on site.

COVID restrictions have meant we cannot host visitors to DMRC this year. Whilst Jane and Andy’s efforts in helping the physical – and mental – wellbeing of our patients might be out of sight, they are most certainly not out of mind! Thank you both for all that you do.

On the employment assistance end of our work, again we have not allowed COVID to stop us delivering much needed assistance and guidance to those ex military who seek new careers in the great outdoors.

When it became apparent that our wonderful Rural Weeks programme, delivered with our partners at Bicton College, could not be delivered on site in its usual format, a modified online virtual programme was very quickly developed and launched. As a consequence, we have been able to offer vital resettlement advice to more than forty military personnel embarking on the daunting transition into a new life in the land based civilian sector. A special thanks must go to Chris at Bicton; you are superstar and your efforts have had a dramatically positive impact on so many people!

Continuing to deliver our services in the current climate is extremely challenging. Navigating the myriad of COVID restrictions is hard enough in itself but generating the funds to do our work at all is very, very hard.

Some of our usual sources of funding are themselves struggling and we have had to drill down hard on our support costs and delay some planned expansion plans next year to make ends meet. I am hugely grateful for the support of my fellow Trustees; they are going above and beyond to help ensure that HighGround is configured and, crucially, funded to do its work now and well into the future.

I wish everyone in the wider HighGround family a safe and happy Christmas season and very much hope that 2021 brings a change for the better in our collective fortunes! Thank you all for your support for HighGround.

We are a small Charity but we make a massive difference to our beneficiaries’ lives!