Brigade: The restaurant helping vulnerable people find work in the food trade

Using culinary training as a catalyst to motivate and inspire, the social enterprise has worked with thousands of people since 2011 – and has employed over a hundred full-time apprentices at its restaurant in south London, writes Hazel Sheffield

Apprentices at Brigade Bar and Restaurant in south London (Matt Austin)

Ben Graveston was being treated for complex post-traumatic stress disorder when he first heard of Brigade, a bar and kitchen with a difference.

He had spent 10 months at the Maudsley, a psychiatric hospital in south London, after a breakdown: a tick bite on a tour of Afghanistan led to a debilitating bacterial infection called Q fever, then a prolonged period of insomnia and depression as he struggled to cope with the end of his career as a combat medic. By the time he left the army, Ben had served in Afghanistan and Iraq, completing five operation tours in the time that someone of his rank would usually be expected to complete one and a half. As his recovery progressed, and he began to contemplate life outside the psychiatric hospital, Graveston worried about how he would adjust to life on his own.