Veterans Aid CEO shares expertise with Canadians

The Chief Executive of Veterans Aid, Dr Hugh Milroy, has just returned from a working trip to Canada where he met the newly appointed Veterans Ombudsman, Chief Warrant Officer (Retired) Guy Parent, briefed members of Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) and spoke at the country’s first Military and Veterans Health Conference in Kingston, Ontario.

Dr Milroy was one of 250 international health professionals and academics participating in the groundbreaking Kingston forum and the only British contributor. The event, hosted by The Royal Military College of Canada and Queen’s University in Kingston, gave participants an opportunity to share in the latest research advances in all disciplines associated with the health protection and care of Canada’s serving and released military personnel, aid workers, police, diplomats, and other Canadians exposed to dangerous and hazardous environments in the service of their country. This includes the through life effects on physical, mental and social health from such service on those who serve and their families.

Dr Milroy’s short stay in Canada was funded by the Office of the Veterans Ombudsman (OVO) but it enabled him to take part in a number of relevant initiatives. He briefed researchers at the University of Western Ontario who are conducting the first formal study of homelessness among the Canadian veterans community and shared his expertise with VAC staff in Toronto who are conducting a pilot project into working with street homeless veterans.

He said afterwards “It was a hugely valuable trip and I was pleased to be able to assist and advise our Canadian colleagues. They have a very good system for Veteran care but, as they have discovered, sometimes people can slip through the safety net and end up on the streets. The real issue is, what do you do about it when it happens?”

Dr Milroy, who is Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College as well as Chair of the Ex-Service Action group (ESAG), has headed-up Veterans Aid for five years. The 78-year-old charity provides immediate and practical help to ex-Servicemen and women who are homeless or in crisis. Its high success rate and pioneering model of ‘hand-up’ rather than ‘hand-out’ has attracted interest from researchers and practitioners in the USA, Japan, Argentina and Croatia as well as Canada.

A spokesman from OVO told Dr Milroy “There is still no research on homeless Veterans in Canada and your experience from a like-minded nation, with traditions and practices similar to Canada and a National Healthcare system (unlike the US) could provide some real insight into the problems with military transition and service delivery obstacles”

There are 90,000 men and women, including reservists, currently serving in the Canadian military and over 750,000 Veterans. As at 1 October 2010, the full time Trained Strength of the UK Armed Forces was 178,470. This comprises 174,080p UK Regular Forces, 690p Full Time Reserve Service personnel and 3,700 Gurkhas. There are more than 5.5 million Veterans in the UK.