Woody’s Lodge awarded Royal Navy & Royal Marines Charity Funding

We are delighted to announce that Woody’s Lodge has been granted funding from the Royal Navy & Royal Marines Charity in partnership with Greenwich Hospital!

This funding will allow us to actively engage with the Royal Navy & Royal Marine veterans community in South East Wales, as well as enabling greater access to our social, signposting and support facilities. 

We want to enable the ex-servicemen/women currently linked to Royal Navy and Royal Marine Associations in South East Wales to engage with us here Woody’s Lodge as well ensuring that we’re accessible to the wider Royal Navy & Royal Marines community. 

In this project funded by the Royal Navy & Royal Marines Charity in partnership with Greenwich Hospital, we will proactively engage with the ex-Royal Navy and Royal Marines community within South East Wales with the introduction of a Project Officer and a Transport Officer.

Our Woody’s Lodge Project Officer will act as an intermediary to engage with the current Royal Navy and Royal Marines Association in South East Wales to offer their current members the use of Woody’s Lodge facilities and our support services at Amelia Farm in Barry, as well as our Drop-in Centres across South Wales.

Using local veteran’s networks already in place, as well as referral systems with our partnership agencies working in South East Wales, our Project Officer will work to engage with Royal Navy/Royal Marine Veterans and their families.

We will also work as referral partners to the ‘Family in Crisis Team’ based at University Hospital of Wales – Cardiff. In addition, we’re looking to develop our monthly Partner and Children Lunches into more family engagement activity days, such as ‘Family on the Farm days’ which will be introduced in February 2020. We will also work with SSCE, using farm and outdoor day and weekend activities at our Amelia Trust Farm location for Service Children, by coordinating these activities for Royal Navy & Royal Marine’s children, it will enable the children to meet and socialise with their service peers. 

In addition, the appointment of a Transport Officer will be pivotal to ensuring we are able to reach Royal Navy & Royal Marine veterans that are unable to access transport and are at risk of isolation, utilising our existing Woody’s Lodge minibus. 

A Transport Officer will create the ability for us to provide a free Pick up and Drop off service initially within the Vale of Glamorgan for Royal Navy/Royal Marine veterans and their families living in isolation or without access to their own or public Transport.

In addition, it will allow us to offer transport services to service children offering services such as school pickups within the Vale of Glamorgan school areas.

This funding will allow us to offer our services, providing support and signposting to Royal Navy & Royal Marines veterans and their families in the South East Wales area. 

Obviously, we are very keen to get this project off the ground, however we are facing delays in the current climate with COVID-19, please bear with us. 

If you, or somebody you know, is struggling since leaving active service, whether adjusting to civilian and family life or missing the camaraderie of the services, why not see how Woody’s Lodge can help? We’re a Welsh veteran’s charity that can support and signposting to the armed forces and their families. Take a look at our Veteran’s Stories, where you can see how we’ve supported other veterans, emergency service leavers and their families.