Through our Outreach work we will foster awareness amongst the wider public of the issues that affect the Armed Forces Community, most notably that of the transition into civilian employment, housing and cultural differences and the potential for disadvantage, exclusion and long term issues should that transition not be successful. By signposting our clients to the appropriate support will help them successfully reintegrate into civilian life and could help to reduce long-term issues requiring more expensive interventions.
In addition we can offer confidence boosting help through comradeship in our group activities. There remain many Veterans unaware of what support they can still access years after their discharge, MCVC have already signposted a significant number to relevant help.
Increase awareness of the benefits for local employers by engaging with the Employers Community Covenant through Rotherham Council, Rotherham Chamber of Commerce, Federation of Small Businesses South & East Yorkshire as well as 15 Brigade’s Employment Initiative the Career Transition Partnership (CTP), represented in South Yorkshire by the Regular Forces Employment Association Sheffield branch.
200 Service leavers registered with CTP have resettled in the Borough since January 2012 plus 50 Early Service Leavers helped by the RFEA. Some have only discovered their eligibility to access this support via the MCVC. In addition families of former Service personnel can access help via our outreach programme.
Extrapolating the 1 in 6 principle means there are potentially 42,434 plus Veterans amongst the 254,605 residents in the Borough. As we raise our profile with our OUTREACH programme we fully expect to increase the take up rate of help we offer which will enable us to collect the evidence of need to support future strategy.
Our MCVC survey undertaken last winter identified an overwhelming desire from Veterans to see an OUTREACH and Drop In support service to be implemented.
There is a significant reluctance amongst residents particularly in the outlying small parishes to travel into Rotherham town centre due to health or financial constraints, hence our decision to take the support out to their localities.
A large number of veterans recently turned out to support our Armed Forces Day and the Freedom Parade for the Yorkshire Regiment clearly demonstrating we have these customers amongst us but they’re not immediately apparent.