Posts Tagged ‘veterans’
New Veterans Services Measures Take Effect Thursday
– Highlights 24 Pieces of Legislation to Make Virginia the Most Veteran Friendly State in America –
RICHMOND – Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell today highlighted legislation taking effect July 1st that recognizes his commitment to make Virginia the most Veteran friendly state in America. Included in this is legislation establishing a Veterans Skills Database, fee waivers for Veterans seeking small business permits, protecting the right to display the American flag at their home, and designating the Honor and Remember Flag as the Commonwealth’s emblem of service and sacrifice.
Speaking about the legislation becoming law on July 1st, Governor McDonnell remarked, “Virginia is home to more than 830,000 veterans and almost 200,000 Virginians are serving in the military around the world. Our state government must continue to do more to better serve those who have voluntarily protected America for generations past and present. During the 2010 legislative session we passed 24 pieces of legislation to make Virginia the most veteran-friendly state in America. I have tasked Commissioner of the Department of Veterans Services Paul Galanti to develop a Veterans Bill of Rights to identify the needs of veterans and their families so we can make sure those needs are met. I have also asked the Virginia Employment Commission, in cooperation with the Department of Veterans Services and the Secretary of Commerce and Trade, to establish a Veterans Skills Database to help market and promote workforce skills to veterans. We passed legislation protecting a Virginian’s right to fly the American flag on his or her property. Further, we have designated the Honor and Remember Flag as the Commonwealth’s emblem of service and sacrifice by the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces, who have given their lives in the line of duty. The community of veterans and active duty soldiers who call Virginia home deserve our support and recognition to ensure their success in the Commonwealth.”
Commissioner of Veterans Services Paul Galanti also noted, “We are working hard to implement the most affected policies to ensure our veterans and active duty soldiers have the tools they need to be successful at home and continue to choose Virginia as their place of retirement. The 24 pieces of legislation going into law on Thursday will better equip us with the tools needed to provide Virginia’s veterans with the services they need.”
See new law details available here.
Congressman Moran and the Veterans History Project
Congressman Moran, in partnership with Fairfax County and the Library of Congress, would like to invite you to an event on May 15th at the Hollin Hall Senior Center. The event is an opportunity to meet with Library of Congress staff, help facilitate historical interviews with veterans, and help connect those interested in interviewing and engaging the project to have an opportunity to do so.
The Veterans History Project of the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center collects, preserves, and makes accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war.
Further details are available here .
An 81-Year-Old Foster Son?
New Program Pairs Veterans Who Would Be in a Nursing Home with Families Who Are Willing to Take Them In
Just outside Tampa, Fla., CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman found the story of an odd couple – a wonderful inspiring odd couple.
The house actually belongs to a sweetheart of a man named Rick Heady. Rick is a foster parent, of sorts – his foster “kid” just happens to be 81, and gruff as all get-out.
“What did you do in the Marine Corps?” Hartman asked.
“Kill people,” Charles Dowling said.
“But you survived to live another day,” Hartman said.
“To kill again,” Dowling said.
“Well you’re a lovely, lovely man,” Hartman said, laughing.
“Bulls-t,” Dowling said.
He actually is pretty wonderful, once you get to know him. Dowling served in Korea and Vietnam, and later became a drill sergeant – putting in close to 30 years with the Marines. Until recently he was living in a nursing home – destined for hospice – but then this total stranger came forward and offered to take him in.
“I’m not going to let our veterans, our veterans, be forgotten,” Heady said.
That’s a belief shared by all these people who are part of a new Veteran’s Affairs program called the Medical Foster Home program. It pairs vets who would otherwise be in a nursing home with civilians who are willing to take them into their homes instead.
“It takes a special caregiver who is really able to open their homes and their hearts to the veterans and it’s not easy,” said Beau Williams with Veterans Affairs.
Williams said medical foster homes are now in 34 states and within a few years could be in all 50. It’s partly because nursing homes average about $6,000 a month, while this only costs about half that. The money goes to caregivers like Heady, who quit his job as a sales manager to do this.
“Not only is it cost effective but more importantly the veterans feel like their part of a family, they receive love,” Williams said. “They receive a lot of attention, a lot of care.”
As for what the care giver gets out of it – let’s just say Heady has found the experience so rewarding he recently took in a second veteran.
“He’s helped me vastly in recovery,” said Clayton Smith.
Smith was in the Air Force when he got hit by a truck and suffered a brain injury. They were going to put him in a nursing home, too, until Heady stepped up.
“Rick is A-OK,” Smith said.
That’s glowing praise from a drill sergeant – and more than enough reward for Rick.
“This is what I’ll do until the day I retire,” Heady said. “It’s that good.”
Good for him, and good for America.
VA Official: Civilians Must Help in Identifying Combat Trauma
The public must be enlisted in the fight against combat stress because veterans often don’t know they suffer from problems, a top Veterans Affairs official said Thursday.
Tammy Duckworth is an assistant secrfetary at the VA, who lost both legs while serving in Iraq. She was the keynote speaker at the 2010 Virginia is for Heroes Conference in Richmond.
Half-jokingly, she referred to her fellow soldiers as stubborn and hard-headed, the last ones to seek help.
She also spoke haltingly about the fellow soldier who saved her life by pulling her from a wrecked helicopter.
“Often, it is us who see the signs of trouble in a veteran before they are willing to admit it,” she said. “Maybe it’s the colleague or supervisor at work who notices that short-term memory is affected. It is the children who get snapped at because maybe a brain injury is affecting ability to control emotions.” …more
Are You A Millennial Veteran With A Great Idea?
If you’re a veteran of the Armed Services aged 18-34, and you have an idea of how to improve your community, campus, or installation – click here to tell us your idea and to apply for a complimentary ticket to Los Angeles to share your idea with 100 other veterans, and the whole nation. While there, you’ll stay in the luxurious DoubleTree Hotel and attend the Los Angeles Galaxy soccer team’s opening game. Most importantly, you’ll have the opportunity to earn thousands of dollars to fund your idea, in addition to a year of mentoring and support from other veterans – as well as a chance to appear on MTV.
Mobilize.org, in partnership with MTV, ServiceNation: Mission Serve, and with generous support from USO and the Goldhirsh and McCormick Foundations, is hosting Beyond the Welcome Home, a competition by and for veterans that will find and support the best veteran-led ideas from across America. Click here to learn more – and apply to join us in Los Angeles from April 1 – 3.
The team from Mobilize.org, ServiceNation, and MTV
Why The VA Frustrates Veterans
There is a sacred tradition in the military: leave no one behind on the battlefield. But many veterans are beginning to believe their country has left them behind at home, once they’re out of uniform and in need of help. That help is supposed to come from the Department of Veterans Affairs and the financial compensation it gives to veterans disabled by their military service.
It was Abraham Lincoln who said the purpose of the VA was to “care for him who shall have borne the battle.” But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have pushed the VA further behind in that mission, and today there are a million veterans waiting for the VA to handle their disability claims.
That has led some to latch onto another motto making the rounds for how the VA operates: “Delay, Deny and Hope That I Die.”
“When I hear that, I will tell you that it really troubles me. As somebody who has devoted 35 years of my life to this organization, and to serving veterans, it’s extremely troubling that there are veterans who feel that way,” the VA’s Deputy Undersecretary for Benefits Michael Walcoff, told 60 Minutes correspondent Byron Pitts.
Last year, $30 billion dollars – one third of the VA’s total budget – was paid in disability compensation to nearly three million veterans.
To receive a disability benefit, a veteran has to be honorably discharged.
“They have to have a current disability, and provide evidence that it was service related?” Pitts asked Walcoff.
“That it’s connected to their service, right,” he replied.
“Why, then, is the claim form 23 pages long?” Pitts asked.
Lifting the Silence
When soldiers come home with invisible injuries — traumatic memories of things they have seen and done — professional therapy should help them heal. Far too many soldiers are unwilling to seek it and many others, as James Dao and Dan Frosch reported in The Times, are keeping too tight a lid on what they reveal in therapy.
That is not just because of the stubborn belief that real warriors can’t show doubt or weakness. There is a strong and legitimate fear that a soldier who confesses horrible things to a therapist faces a serious risk of career damage, disciplinary action or even prosecution.
The military has rules governing the privacy of soldiers in therapy, but they contain more exceptions than the federal law protecting civilians. Experts told The Times that confidentiality doesn’t exist. A former military lawyer noted that the rules allow confidences to be breached to ensure the success of “a military mission” — which could mean almost anything a unit does.
The Full Cost of War in Afghanistan
Add Your Name to An Open Letter at IAVA
On Tuesday night, President Obama announced his plan to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan.
The full cost of this war must include a lifetime of support for each of these new veterans and their families.
Add your name to the open letter and urge our nation’s leaders to fully plan for this new surge of veterans in the coming years.
Add your name at www.IAVA.org/Afghanistan.
The New Way Forward
Here’s the link to the President’s Address to the Nation on the Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Regardless of your individual opinion on the President’s decision, unfortunately one of the issues that appears to be missing from his address is he did not mention the impact of a build-up in force after the fact — namely Veterans.
The non-profit organization Veterans for Common Sense has a number of good articles high-lighted to this effect.
- VCS Demands Plan to Handle Afghanistan War Casualties
- Obama Administration Struggling to Tackle Mental Health Crisis Plaguing Military
While we have much to be thankful for with the Obama Administration’s handling of the VA so far, much remains to be done.
Here is VCS’s four point response to President Obama’s oversight – he must implement a plan to care for the casualties caused by his escalation of the Afghanistan war:
1. Fill Medical Vacancies. VCS asks President Obama to direct Defense Secretary Gates and VA Secretary Shinseki to quickly fill all of the hundreds of mental healthcare provider vacancies at both DoD and VA in order to meet the expected increase in mental health casualties from the wars for conditions such as TBI, depression, PTSD, and suicide. Additional medical professionals to treat our service members physical wounds, injuries, and illnesses is also warranted.
2. Conduct Exams and Provide Care. The new mental and physical healthcare professionals are urgently needed to perform the universal pre- and post-deployment exams mandated by the Force Health Protection law (PL 105-85). The increase in new hires should also allow for earlier access to treatment for our service members and veterans, when treatment is more effective and less expensive.
3. Fight Stigma. The DoD and VA should expand their anemic anti-stigma campaign and encourage service members and veterans to seek care and train officers to promote exams and treatment. Implementation of an anti-stigma effort remains half-hearted and incomplete, at best, a sign that comments by our top military leaders at press conferences are not filtering down through the ranks.
4. Quickly Process Claims. VA should also anticipate an increase in disability claims due to the increased number of service members deployed, and thus should begin planning to hire any needed additional staff.
Read more at www.veteransforcommonsense.org
First Lady Honors Military Women, Vets
WASHINGTON, Nov. 18, 2009 – First Lady Michelle Obama today cited Army Staff Sgt. Amy Krueger, one of 13 killed during the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, as an example of the determination and courage that has characterized women’s service to the military throughout U.S. history.
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Obama, who hosted about 130 military women and veterans to tea at the White House today, remembered Krueger’s response when her mother told her she could not track down al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden singlehandedly.
“Watch me,” replied Krueger, who enlisted in the Army after the 9/11 terror attacks.
“That phrase, ‘Watch me,” sums up the spirit of our women in uniform throughout our history,” Obama told her guests.
“When others doubted you, or dismissed you, or questioned whether you could endure the training or complete the mission, that was your response, ‘Watch me,” she said. “Watch me succeed. Watch me risk everything I have for the country I love. Watch me do my part to protect this nation and protect this union. Watch me.”
Obama joined Dr. Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, in honoring military women, many who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and others whose service dates back to World War II.