Charity Commission reports exposes veterans groups
Charities set up to assist military veterans are beset by poor governance, the Charity Commission has said.
The body which regulates charities in England and Wales said that many of these organisations set-up in the aftermath of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were failing their client group despite the best intentions.
A report by the commission suggested that some charities did not consider users with mental health problems as a result of serving in the forces to be "vulnerable".
It examined 21 randomly selected military and veterans' charities and visited five which it had serious concerns about.
In the report the commission said that "most of the military charities we engaged with did not have adequate policies in place to deal with complaints".
It found they also suffered from a distinct lack of safeguarding and were prone to data breaches.
And it discovered some military charities were failing to carry out checks on their workers to make sure vulnerable veterans were protected from exploitation.
There has been a rise in organisations set up to help veterans of recent conflicts, with 187 new military charities registered with the Charity Commission since 2007.
Michelle Russell, director of investigations, monitoring and enforcement at the Charity Commission, said: "Some veterans may be potentially vulnerable for a variety of reasons because of what they’ve seen and been through, and charities set up to help them must make caring for them, and protecting them, an absolute priority.
"The public would be rightly concerned if veterans were exposed to harm through a charity supposed to help them."
General Sir John McColl, executive chairman of Cobseo, the Confederation of Service Charities said: “We strongly support the Charity Commission’s scrutiny of safeguarding and fundraising practices, not just for the military charities on its register, but across the entire charitable sector.
"Service charities play a crucial, and highly effective, role in supporting the armed forces community.”
