Have you ever worked in armed forces? Our project can help you
How to access confidential support for veterans, military and the family
The Forces Families Project is a Citizens Advice project established three years ago when three of Hampshire’s Local Citizens Advice (LCA) offices, Hart, Portsmouth and Rushmoor, realised that there was a requirement for a service tailored to the needs of serving veterans, military and their families.
The project is funded by the Armed Forces Covenant.
As we are part of Citizens Advice, we offer the same free, confidential, impartial, and independent levels of support, guidance and advice as does the core service.
Our advice covers areas such as debt and money, housing, family, immigration and benefits. Our advice ranges from sending someone a link with further information or dealing with more involved casework. The
case study below illustrates one of our more complex cases.
Our client, a serving member of the armed forces, had been struggling to engage with the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) to re-examine the highly complex situation in which he found himself and to adjust his payments accordingly.
The family structure was very involved and related to children with a number of different partners in different countries. Our client approached us and nominated us to represent him with the CMS.
After several weeks of attempts to gain traction with the CMS, we recommended he raise an appeal with the First Tier Tribunal in the Social Entitlement Chamber.
Supported by guidance from Citizens Advice's in-house Family Law team, we assisted the client with assembling evidence for his appeal and completion of the court documents.
As the client was serving overseas at the time, we represented him at the hearing and achieved a successful adjudication, saving our client several hundred pounds of payments, as well as any legal costs he might otherwise have been forced to incur.
We start every initial meeting with an ‘explore’ session where we listen to
your issues. We then establish an agreed plan of action and empower you with the knowledge to manage your situation. We can arrange face to face appointments, video conferencing, telephone or email. We recently set up an
outreach office at Aldershot Garrison Community Hub,
every Tuesday from 10.00am to 13.00pm.
While our prime focus is on supporting people with existing issues, we have started providing group financial capability training sessions where we discuss money management. The sessions have been designed for technical trainees but we are open to designing sessions for other groups.
We will continue to support and advise you wherever you may be.