Dublin University date for Veteran’s charity boss

Veterans charity chief Dr Hugh Milroy will be sharing the stage with a distinguished academic colleague from the University of Georgia on 1July to talk about Veteran homelessness and the factors underlying it.

Chief Executive Officer of Veterans Aid (www.veterans-aid.net ) and a former Gulf War Veteran, Dr Milroy was recently appointed Senior Visiting Research Fellow at Kings College, London. He has collaborated with Haltiwanger Distinguished Professor and Head of Georgia University’s Department of Child and Family Development, Professor Jay A. Mancini on a number of occasions.

The pair will be addressing the issue of Vulnerability and resilience: Social, emotional, and physical health among homeless men at the 6th International Conference on Social Work in Health and Mental Health at Dublin University.

Dr Milroy, who chairs ESAG (the Ex-Service Action Group on homelessness), said “Homelessness is the tip of the iceberg. When a Veteran is reduced to living on the streets he (or she) has lost everything; the events leading up to that loss can be medical, social, psychological or economic. Life in Britain today is complex and challenging; it is poverty that accounts for the problems that bring most veterans to our doors. And that can be a result of myriad things, ranging from relationship breakdown to job-loss.”

Describing VA as a ‘post-modern charity’ Dr Milroy has always maintained that there is no causal link between military service and homelessness. His study with Professor Mancini is based on clinical observations of what brings men to Veterans Aid; what happens within the intervention; what happens as the intervention unfolds and what happens as the intervention is sustained.

“Veterans Aid is the ‘A&E’ of the ex-Service charity world; a nexus of expertise, academic and practical, that has been dealing with homelessness and its underlying causes for decades. We focus on prevention as well as cure and we have a very low recidivism rate,” concluded Dr Milroy.

His model has been consulted by academics, practitioners and those involved in the care of Veterans in the USA, Canada, and Argentina.