Homeless charity benefits from £22k veteran funds

A homeless charity recognised nationally for its project to help veterans has received £22,000 to support its ongoing work.

The Macari Foundation was founded in 2016 by former Stoke manager Lou Macari after seeing how many homeless people there were in the area while he was manager.

The charity, which dedicates six of the rooms at its centre specifically to accommodate homeless veterans, has now received a grant from the Veterans' Foundation.

Figures show there are currently 400 servicemen and women living rough around the UK.

Paul Mountford, a veteran who has been supported by the centre since January, said: "They've been phenomenally kind and phenomenally helpful. They're there to listen, not to judge and that's what's good about it."

Stoke-on-Trent City Council has now told Mountford that he can have a residence of his own, which he will move into once one becomes available.

Paul Macari, the charity's operations manager, explained that veterans may have slightly different needs to other people the charity supports, so the charity can identify what support they need.

Martin Palmer, the centre's veteran liaison lead, added: "Any veteran will tell you this, they tend to be a lot better at speaking to somebody who's been in a similar position.

"They more often than not feel a lot more comfortable speaking to another veteran about their issues and, about going forward, what they're struggling with."

Palmer believes the Macari Foundation is the only local facility that has veterans on staff.

For many of the veterans they support, it is a big and daunting transition from the armed forces into civilian life.

The charity's approach to this is to continue meeting with veterans after they have left the centre's accommodation, to keep supporting them.

"When you're in the forces, you've got what I would class as a big umbrella over your head and it stops a lot of the rubbish coming down on you," Palmer said, adding that the armed forces could sort out an array of administrative problems for active members.

This support disappears upon leaving the forces.

"You've not got that level of care above you, so it can be quite daunting for someone who's never had to deal with what a lot of people are classed as the basics, things like sorting out your council tax and stuff like that," he added.

"So if we then took a veteran who's been in a position where he's not had to deal with that himself before and put him in a house and he's still not got the experience of dealing with specifically on a day-to-day basis then it can be setting people up for failure."

Palmer visits some of the veterans every Friday, saying sometimes it was "just for a cup of tea and to put the world to rights".

Speaking about the impact the £22,000 of funding will have, Palmer said: "It also allows us the time to go out and do sort of aftercare once they've finished living with us and they've moved on to their own accommodation."

"Just to try and try and help them in their transition back into sort of a normal way of life."

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