In an interview with Ashley Hall on the ABC’s AM program, Geoff Evans, the younger veterans’ advisor with RSL LifeCare, reveals that an accommodation service for young veterans in the Northern Beaches was over-subscribed even before it had been widely advertised.

Geoff is familiar with the difficulties war veterans can face when they return home.

He says: “I was nearly 20 years in the commandos myself and then I was wounded in action in December 2010, and that ended my military career. And I came back and I was really unsure where I was going to go. And I had a lot of mental illness myself.”

Geoff describes the extent of homelessness amongst veterans as “drastic”.  He says “(w)e’re not just talking about veterans; we’re talking about families of veterans. So we’ve got women and children sleeping in cars.”

Geoff claims that while the Department of Veterans Affairs offers a range of repatriation services to returning veterans, in the area of homelessness, it badly lets them down.

He says that “(i)f you fall over completely, the system will put you back together again. But we wait until that person falls over completely and then it’s a long build for them again if they can ever get back on their feet. We need to be intervening earlier and we need to have a particular focus on homelessness and providing support to the family unit as a whole.”

Read the full interview with Geoff Evans and his involvement with the Contemporary Veterans’ Accommodation and Assistance Program.

Source: ABC Radio National, AM Program, 5 Nov 2014