A roadmap to end homelessness amongst Veterans

Abstract: This study was developed by the Cobseo (the Confederation of Service Charities) Housing cluster, working with The Riverside Group Limited and the University of York, with funding from the Forces in Mind Trust (FiMT). The study was commissioned following the establishment of the No Homeless Veterans Campaign, which was set up in 2019 by Stoll on behalf of Cobseo Housing Cluster, which worked with Homeless Link and the National Housing Federation to raise the profile of veterans amongst housing providers. The overall aim of the project was to create an integrated strategy or ‘No Homeless Veterans Roadmap,’ through original research and building upon current research to prescribe an action plan to address UK veterans’ homelessness. Whilst focused on the task of achieving the aim of No Homeless Veterans, this research study was concerned with how to achieve this throughout Service and onward civilian life. The report therefore considers the experiences of Service Personnel (SP), Service Leavers (SL) (at the point of discharge from Service) and veterans. Following governmental definitions, veterans are anyone who has served for at least one day in His Majesty’s Armed Forces (Regular or Reserve). The context for the project is a very stretched housing market across the UK, increasing the risk of housing exclusion and homelessness for all members of society. For veterans, arguably the gap between military and civilian life is getting wider - the impact of a widening inequality in society generally; increasing employment precarity; the cost of living crisis; and a lack of preparedness of some SL and the housing market crisis makes leaving Service increasingly uncertain. In addition, the project was undertaken at a time of change across transition policy for those preparing to, and leaving, Service. New services had recently been established, including the Defence Transition Service (MOD) taking on new responsibilities, and Op FORTITUDE providing short-term revenue funding and a centralised referral pathway for veteran supported accommodation. A number of governmental reviews of veteran policy were underway or recently published, including on welfare services. This period of change provides opportunities to reshape policy in this important area.

Read the full article
Report a problem with this article

Related articles

  • More for Policy & Practice

    Armed Forces Covenant toolkit: Updated edition (2025)

    Abstract: One of the key achievements of Forces in Mind Trust’s (FiMT) Our Community - Our Covenant series of reports, beginning in 2016, has been to establish a toolkit for local authorities to help them develop support for their local Armed Forces Community (AFC). The 2016 report launched the idea of a “core infrastructure”, supported by self-assessment questions and some wider tips. Formal research and informal engagement show that the toolkit still provides an important contribution to successful local delivery of Covenant pledges and wider AFC support. It’s a baseline in the face of ever-present funding stresses and a point of reference when there are changes in member and officer responsibilities. This means it is important that the toolkit remains up to date. It was last reviewed in 2022 and presented as an Annex to FiMT’s research report A Decade of the Covenant. Since then, there has been further research into local support for the Armed Forces Community for the next iteration of the Our Community - Our Covenant series. This updated toolkit reflects these recent findings about local practice as well as developments following the introduction in the Armed Forces Act 2021 of the duty of due regard to the principles of the Covenant in the focus areas of housing, education and healthcare. As with the original document, the toolkit remains targeted at local authorities. It covers their own direct role in supporting the local AFC, but also the crucial activity of convening local partnerships and so enabling effective local collaborative action. The key changes to the core infrastructure and self-assessment cover: (1) More emphasis on embedding AFC support into the mainstream of local authority work. (2) An extended top tips section with more advice based on recent research. (3) We have dropped the descriptive scenarios of challenges that members of the AFC face. These have now been overtaken by analytical scenarios included in the freely available national training material and in the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) Covenant Legal Duty toolkit, which helps to explain the legal duty aspect of the Covenant. (4) Some additional material about the individual roles, collaboration, communication and vision and commitment elements of the core infrastructure. This toolkit update is being made in spring 2025 at a time when further change in the Covenant environment is likely, with potential extension of the Covenant duty and expected re-organisation in English local government and creation of new combined or strategic authorities. Additional modules could be added to the toolkit to reflect these ongoing policy developments.

    Education / Training Housing Peer reviewed