Carers Plus Yorkshire are delighted to welcome Tracie Birdsall to their team of Advisers to Unpaid Carers. Tracie's post has gratefully been funded through the Veterans Foundation.
The Veterans' Foundation purpose is to raise funds and give grants to charitable organisations that support serving and former members of the armed forces, and their dependants, who are in need. The Veterans’ Foundation is one of the country’s leading military charities. It was set up in 2016 to raise funds to help charities provide vital support to our armed forces’ community. These include those serving, veterans and their families with a range of needs, including mental health, physical therapy and rehabilitation, homelessness and education and training.
Our Project will work specifically with Veteran's who are in a caring role, or with those families who are caring for a Veteran.
Our 3 main objectives are simple:
- Identifying and then building relationships with individuals - those 'veterans who are carers' and/or those 'family/friends who are caring for a veteran'
- Developing confidence such that veteran carers/those caring for veterans can make the step into engaging with others. Based largely around social engagement, we look to encourage attendance at small support group activities that are about laughter, sharing and making new acquaintances.
- Providing learning opportunities for participants - from experience they may include support with sleep strategies, finance updates (to ensure families have the best income for themselves) resilience training, support with mental health, relationship management, loss, drug and alcohol support.
The project is now open for referrals which would go directly to the specialist 1 to 1 veteran advisor who would support them on a personalised journey of change. The ultimate aim of the journey being that they become increasingly independent and resilient in their caring role
To make a referral please complete the form here indicating that the carer or cared for is a veteran, or call Tracie on 07701 256150 for an informal chat.