The Veteran Transition Centre in Jarrahdale continues to transform a 42-acre property into a sanctuary to help veterans past and present.
Jarrahdale’s Recovery and Restoration Centre offers support to veterans and their families, to help them to rehabilitate in a tranquil and serene environment.
With support from the Serpentine Jarrahdale RSL, the property is being transformed and upgraded to cater for more veterans and their families.
President of the Serpentine Jarrahdale RSL Rob Coales, said the RSL is proud to partner with the Veteran Transition Centre (VTC).
“There has been the feeling in the past that the RSL hasn’t done enough,” he said.
“This is a no brainer for us to partner with the VTC to get that support, especially for the Serpentine Jarrahdale veterans but also the veterans in the wider community.”
“We have a partnership with an op-shop in Byford, the funds from that come straight back into this facility here to put back into the veterans which is what we’re all about.”
Greg Green is the Chief Executive at the VTC and he said they recently applied for federal funding.
“We didn’t approach the federal government until we had a really good understanding of what we were doing here,” he said.
“In the early days they were very supportive but we didn’t actually go to them (for funding) until about six months ago.
“We put a request in for some funding to do capital works and they’ve provided us with those funds.”
The property is across three different lots of land with cabins, chalets and duplex’s to house veterans, families and groups.
The grounds consist of 10 chalets at the top of the property, which will be exclusively offered to veterans support and on site accommodation.
“The demand has been extraordinary and we’ve functioned through donations and alignments that we have with the RSL and local sub-branches here and we’ve just been doing things that we can afford to do,” Mr Green said.
“We’re now talking about the top section of the property being completely upgraded and fully operational by the end of June, then we can start doing what we wanted to do which is to look after veterans.”
“The next stage will be the middle section of the property where we will upgrade the duplex properties.
“We’re in a much better place now to do what we need to do, for me the timing is perfect.
“Two years ago I’m not sure we would have spent the money in the areas that we probably needed to.”
“We have people coming to us and they really want support and because we’ve had that time, people understand how it works.”
