Ex-Forces and Homeless

As the name implies, last Tuesday night’s BBC TV documentary “Ex-Forces and Homeless” attempted to find out why a large proportion of Britain’s homeless is made up of veterans. Ken Hames, who lead the investigation and who served for 27 years in the Army fighting in both the Falklands and the Gulf, started the programme with the depressing statistics that “on any given night in London alone there are thought to be over a thousand homeless veterans; in some parts of the country they number 12% of the homeless population.”
The programme took Hames on a journey from an ominous doss "shelter" under Holborn Viaduct to a grim, austere hostel in Glasgow. But it was as much a journey of self-discovery (if not self-indulgence) for Hames himself as it was to hear the stories of the homeless veterans he met.
Ken Hames’ aims were to find out why so many veterans are homeless and whether it was their experience in the military that caused it. So what did this documentary tell us?

• It is not at the transition from military to civilian life that the problems occur; they happen many years later. Hames says that “most [veterans] end up homeless years after they leave the services, when their problems have overwhelmed them”. He concedes that “in recent years the resettlement training and advice provided by the armed services has greatly improved; everyone gets assistance in returning to civilian life, regardless of rank”. In many cases, the postponement of the collapse is because psychological trauma can lay dormant and erupt many years after the events that caused them.
• Although homelessness is not a feature of the transition stage, the psychological effects of going from the military to the civilian world obviously build up over time and make a major contribution to the downward spiral. On leaving the forces the individual can become cut off from his support systems at the very time when he most needs support. One interviewee said, “When you leave the “band of brothers” you don’t realise what you’re going to lose. You feel abandoned. Civilians who are not ex-forces don’t really understand you.” The feelings of self-worth and the pride felt in wearing the uniform and serving your country are taken away. The paternalistic, disciplined and authoritarian nature of the forces, where decisions are made for you and things happen in a regular and regimented way, can make it harder for some people to cope with the difficulties of civilian life; this is especially so following long periods of service. Indeed the longer the period of service, the greater the problem of adjustment – three of the four interviewees (and indeed Hames himself) had been in the Services for over twenty years.
• Making the transition to civilian life is always difficult but for those who have experienced the stress of combat, the adjustment can be even harder. For those who have had traumatic experiences the mental scars are deeper; “you can’t shoot and kill someone and walk away unblemished”. For Hames “the key to avoiding the downward spiral is facing your demons no matter where they came from”. One interviewee had done just that and had pinpointed the exact moment that had triggered his PTSD. Identifying this event had enabled him to cope with life despite being theoretically homeless - he was living temporarily in a caravan in Cornwall.
• A dysfunctional early family environment is common amongst many of the homeless veterans. This can cause psychological problems which can be masked or contained during military service but come to the surface again when the “rigid lifestyle” of military service is withdrawn. The director of the one homeless organisation that was interviewed said: “Most of the people we see will have had very dysfunctional backgrounds, families, before they come into the military. And it tends to mean that people who come in [the Forces] with serious problems maybe contain them very well and function OK while they’re there but when they come out the other end they’re in a very similar emotional place to where they were when they went in”. “With all the people we’ll be getting coming into our service, despite whatever the experiences they’ve had in the military, the experience in early childhood and adolescence will probably be much more significant, will explain some of the reasons for going into the military, but will also tell us a lot about why things went a bit wrong in the military or why things went wrong afterwards and they ended up homeless.”
• The climb out of homelessness gets very much harder the longer it's experienced. The founder of the Big Issue said that “three months of homelessness takes three years to get out of your system”. The depression resulting from homelessness is the “killer of people’s ability to reconnect with society”.

OK….. so did the program work? On one level it did: if nothing else, it raised the profile of the plight of Britain’s homeless veterans. It would have raised public awareness and tugged at the collective British conscience.
However the programme raised more questions than it answered and failed to come up with any solutions other than the rather prosaic: “the key to avoiding the downward spiral is facing your demons”.

• What about the difficulties experienced in keeping a job, about divorce and family breakdown? These are contributory factors to homelessness after all.
• There are many organisations and charities that can help veterans in difficulties: why did those interviewed not approach them for support?
• Although a serviceman may lose his particular “band of brothers”, there are regimental associations with members who can empathise and relate to an ex-soldier in trouble; why are these not approached for help?
• Homelessness occurs many years after the veterans have left the service. Do the years away mean that they have become so disconnected from the support agencies that they feel ineligible to seek help?
• Hames interviewed servicemen. How many homeless servicewomen are there and do they have the same problems?
• The guys interviewed had left the services many years, even decades, ago. What’s the situation with regards to the current generation? What difficulties do those who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan find in adjusting to civilian life?
• Whilst the MoD is doing a better job at handling the transition, should it also be keeping tabs on veterans and following them up after 5, 10 even 20 years to see if they need helping?
• The majority of UK citizens have little or no personal contact with the Services. In WW1 every family had a soldier on the front. In WW2 total war meant the civil population itself was on the frontline. The wars in the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan are seen on TV but not experienced directly. There is no shared experience between the civilian and the military. There is no common “language”; no “communication”. Is the veterans’ feeling of alienation from society, therefore, reinforced by society’s own detachment from the Armed Forces?

Several organisations which provide help to veterans who are homelessness, need support or are suffering from PTSD problems, are listed on the righthand side of this webpage.
One organisation that is actively seeking to prevent homelessness amongst Britain's veterans is Parcels43 with its Priority Housing 4 xForces campaign. This campaign seeks to oblige local councils and housing associations to give priority to ex-Service personnel and their families rather than making them wait in homeless units and hostels or temporary accommodation. If you would like to sign their petition, visit: Link> Parcels43: Priority Housing4XForces

Ken Hames started the Ex-Forces and Homeless programme by referring to the Covenant: “The 200 year-old Military Covenant says that soldiers will be called upon to make personal sacrifices, including the ultimate sacrifice, confident that in return the Nation will look after them and their families”.

He also opened the programme with the words: “You never let your mates down; you never leave them behind. The principle of the battlefield is: if somebody drops, we carry them and we carry them back to safety.”

One thing is clear from the programme: the Country has let these guys down, has failed to carry them back to safety.