After service support, unlike your military uniform, is not ‘a one size fits all’ which is why we need places like the drop in centres. A place where you can come and get support, advice and a hot meal.
To achieve this, we are linking up with other organisations, which will provide major support to our service at our new, dedicated centre. The service will be run by volunteers, all of whom will receive training to ensure we achieve real life changes for people accessing our services.
This drop-in will be able to provide the much needed and varied help to ensure the Health and Well-being of our Veterans. It has a treatment room for our volunteer nurse to perform a well-being clinic as well as rooms that are to be used for group discussions or one to one advice or support sessions with visiting guest agencies. There is also a little IT suite for job searches, CV writing. For those that may not feel too confident, IT training will be given to cover the essentials in both applications and social media.

Here are a couple of examples of inter agency cohesion.

We received an email from an ex-soldier in Mansfield who had split from his family and was about to become homeless, but he had a job to start in a little over a week in Southampton but nowhere to live. I contacted David from Help 4 Homeless Veterans and with a little bit of email toing and froing and David contacting SAAFA, and between them he was found a home and a couple of our breakfast club members helped him move in.

We also got a distress call from a vet who was in a dark place and said he was losing his fight and his marriage. He felt his meds weren’t working and asked for help. We talked over the phone until he calmed down and I said I was going to make a call to get him some help. I called Gary from Forgotten Veterans UK. This guy now has buddy buddy support and so does his wife.