A NEW veterans’ drop-In support centre to help ex-services personnel has been opened in Bolton at the Bridge Church Conference Centre on Bradford Street.

The volunteer-run service will be open fortnightly on Thursdays between noon and 2pm with volunteer advisors available informally every week from10.30am to 12.30am from next week.

Apart from being a welcoming place for people to meet and socialise, the new service will assist with mental health issues , PTSD, homelessness, benefits advice, debt management and job searching.

Bolton has an estimated 20,000 people with a military connection, many of them ex-national servicemen now in their 70s, 80s and 90s.

At the official launch, the Mayor of Bolton, Cllr Linda Thomas, praised the project and said “this is much needed here.”

The Bolton Guild of Help is behind the new centre. With the support of the Armed Forces Covenant Fund, it set up its Veterans Shall Not Be Forgotten programme three years ago and has helped support local veterans and their families with more than £105,000 worth of aid.

The guild was formed in 1905 and it is very likely it supported soldiers returning from the Boer War. It administers a variety of grants and legacies generally and works with SSAFA The Armed Forces Charity, military benevolent funds and the Royal British Legion.

As guild trustee Richard Davies said: “It is now almost 80 years since the end of World War Two. With every passing year the number of people who served in that conflict is becoming fewer and fewer.

“But, we are still seeing people who have served across the world including the Falklands, both Gulf Wars and Afghanistan.

“Many of these are relatively young people and their problems are many and, quite often, very complex.”

The drop-in centre will help men like Ken, now 67, who served in the Parachute Regiment and did five tours in Northern Ireland.

He became homeless and lived in his car when anger regularly erupted into violence, forcing him from his home and estranging him from his family.

“I can’t talk about the things I saw in Northern Ireland,” he said, “but sounds and smells still trigger memories which affect me.”

Ken has been helped by CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), a local veterans’ centre and The Guild of Help. Through the latter two, he now has a furnished sheltered bungalow “and I’m getting there.”

He added: “This new drop-in centre will definitely help many people. “It really is a way back.”

For more information contact the Guild on 01204 524858 or email Richard Davies on asshawes3@sky.com