Many experts believe that working with animals is a great way to help veterans and others who have been through traumatic and otherwise trying events cope with the issue. To that end, many services now exist to pair veterans with therapy animals like dogs and horses, and one such group recently received a very helpful donation.
A farm in rural Pennsylvania recently received a donated van and motorized scooter from a local family and American Legion post, which will help it to expand its services for veterans, according to a report from the Bucks County Courier Times. The farm, known as Shamrock Reins, provides horse-assisted activities and therapies for both veterans and their families. The Legion will also cover the costs of the van's maintenance going forward.
"This is huge," Janet Brennan, the founder and executive director of Shamrock Reins in Pipersville, Pennsylvania, told the newspaper. "This is really big for us. We want to make our services accessible to all veterans and their families. So, by us having a van, we'll actually go and pick them up."
Joseph Murphy, a retired Army veteran who served in Vietnam and member of the American Legion post, decided to get the donations as part of his dedicated work to helping veterans get the help they need, the report said. He also regularly attends job fairs in hopes of finding employment opportunities he can connect with veterans he knows. He also noted that the van and scooter that were donated actually came from the family of a World War II veteran who recently passed away himself.
These are just some of the many services available to veterans who are having a difficult time coping with civilian life once again. Those who are struggling can always reach out to help as long as they know where to turn.
For the last few years, Boston has been trying to do what a few other big cities already have: Effectively wipe out homelessness among veterans living there. And so far, they've made incredible strides.
Since July 2014, the Boston Homes for the Brave initiative has put more than 530 homeless veterans who were previously relying on emergency shelters into permanent housing, according to a report from public radio station WBUR. By the city's count, that leaves some 79 veterans still without homes, and of that group 25 have to be considered "chronically homeless," mostly due to mental illness or problems with addiction.
"Homeless vets are coming into the system basically one per day," Sheila Dillon, director of the city's Department of Neighborhood Development, told the station. "So our goal is to meet them at the door, find out what they need, and then get them back on track as quickly as possible."
This is a problem that many local governments are now starting to tackle in earnest, but there are still some 50,000 homeless veterans nationwide who remain in need of plenty of help. However, many organizations – governmental or otherwise – now exist to provide assistance to veterans in need.
Many veterans may come home from service with very useful skills, but they may perhaps be lacking for a way to use them to make a living. Now, one group in Maine is trying to help veterans put those skills to some very good use.
The Farmer Veteran Coalition of Maine has recently been created to teach veterans how to use their skills from service in the world of agriculture, according to a report from the Bangor Daily News. This comes at a time when 55 farms in Maine are already run by vets, with 12 other people operating under the state's Homegrown By Heroes program.
The group will also award $5,000 in grants to several disabled veterans to help them get their farming operations off the ground, the report said. Another aspect of it will connect young vets with older farmers who may not be able to do as much physically intensive labor as they used to.
The more veterans can do to connect with groups such as these, and vice versa, the better off they're likely to be going forward. These organizations often have many options available to help veterans reacclimatize to civilian life in a number of ways.
A joint announcement from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Veterans Affairs on Friday, Dec. 8 confirmed a $5.9 million grant to assist homeless Native American veterans in their life after service. Permanent residences and support services will receive the majority of the funding.
"By targeting resources directly to tribes, we can better honor the service and sacrifice of Native American veterans who now need a roof over their heads," said HUD Secretary Julian Castro, according to The Washington Times. "These heroes deserve hope for a brighter future, and by offering permanent housing solutions, combined with needed services and case management, we can work with tribes to end veteran homelessness."
Twenty-six tribes are recipients of the grant money. They will manage and distribute the HUD housing vouchers to those who require them. According to the Times, the HUD-VA Supportive Housing vouchers are the result of a cross-agency initiative by HUD and the VA to quickly and efficiently house any veteran who has recently become homeless. Counseling and clinical support is also provided.
"Targeting HUD-VASH vouchers to veterans living on tribal lands opens new opportunities for helping Native American veterans exit homelessness as quickly as possible," said VA Secretary Robert McDonald.
Tulsa, Oklahoma station Fox 23 reported that since 2008, close to 80,000 HUD-VASH vouchers have been awarded and about 90,000 homeless veterans have been helped through the program itself. By assisting with rent and other services, the joint-agency venture has proven essential in putting an end to homelessness among former servicemembers.
Last year, Congress authorized an expansion of the program into Indian Country and directed HUD to work with Indian tribes and tribal organizations to make sure that qualifying Native American veterans – at least 500 of whom will benefit directly from the new grant – received all the veterans benefits they had earned.
Many Americans are, at this point, well aware that there is something of an epidemic in this country when it comes to homeless veterans. However, not as much is being done about it by state legislators as probably could be.
As a result, one retired Army specialist and his dog recently spent 24 hours outside the Massachusetts State House in Boston to raise awareness among average Americans and lawmakers alike, according to a report from Boston television station WBZ. The veteran, Stephen Bohn, and his dog, Minnie, did this to raise awareness of the fact that there are an estimated 50,000 homeless veterans nationwide, and sat through some bitter New England winter weather to do it.
"It was rough," Bohn said. "I'm not going to lie, I'm not going to play some macho, 'I was military,' it was rough. [But] I decided, hey, why not go and support them, see if we can make a buzz around here to change that and get these men and women off the streets."
Bohn was injured by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan but is not homeless himself, living in nearby Salem, Massachusetts, the report said. He further added that he got the idea by walking around the city of Boston and seeing numerous homeless veterans who had to brave the cold every night.
Fortunately, more lawmakers, at least on a local level, are starting to look for solutions to the veteran homelessness crisis, and a number of organizations have sprung up in recent years to put in their own efforts on this front. Consequently, while this is still a major problem nationwide, it is at least one that is now being confronted on a far more regular basis than it once was.
For years, the economic downturn created some rather difficult labor conditions for millions of Americans to deal with, but those worries have slowly gone away over time thanks to slow but steady recovery. However, this may not have been the case for veterans of the most recent wars in the Middle East.
That group, specifically, had an unemployment rate of 7.2 percent in 2014 – the most recent full year for which data was available – about one-fifth above the 6 percent unemployment rate for non-veterans, according to the Deseret (Utah) News. This was particularly troublesome for women who served in these conflicts, who were unemployed at a rate of 8.5 percent, compared to 6.9 percent for men.
"If you served for four years as an infantryman or driver, it may be difficult for you to see a future in the financial industry or as a mechanic," Kim Morton, a spokesperson for a nationwide veteran's initiative, told the newspaper. "In 2014, roughly 53 percent of post-9/11 veterans dealt with a period of unemployment in their first 15 months out of uniform. Some of those veterans found work only to leave the job within their first year."
Moreover, though, many veterans who have jobs often struggle with underemployment, and others believe that they are overqualified for the work they are doing, the report said. About 1 in 3 respondents to a recent study said that they are dissatisfied with their current work situations for the latter reason.
However, many groups exist to help veterans deal with the rigors of civilian life, and often that kind of assistance is just a phone call or email away. The benefits for veterans these organizations provide may not always be apparent, but they're often relatively easy to find.
Some big changes are coming to the way the Pentagon recognizes combat service. According to the Military Times, a two-year internal review conducted by the Department of Defense has recommended 37 changes that will bring the military's medals system into the 21st century.
Among the changes are a new "C" device that will indicate a medal earned while in combat. Veterans will recognize its similarity to the "V" device currently signifying valor. Along with the new combat denotation is a definition – applicable to every service – of what "meritorious service in combat" means, a change that will affect the criteria for the Bronze Star.
"We're ensuring that the Bronze Star goes out to those who are incurring the risk of combat or actually have a significant risk of hostile action," a defense official told the Military Times.
But the Bronze Star isn't the only medal cast under a new light.
CNN reported on Wednesday that the military was going back to take a close look at more than 1,000 medals awarded since the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, a review initiated by Chuck Hagel, then Secretary of Defense, intended to determine whether or not the actions cited in those awards were worthy of the Medal of Honor.
Seventeen Medals of Honor have been earned since U.S. troops first hit the ground in Afghanistan in 2001. The first seven were given posthumously, but in 2010 the Defense Department issued a clarification on what the "risk of life" qualification meant. Since then, CNN noted, all 10 recipients of the nation's highest honor have been living.
"There is no indication that any service members were not recognized appropriately, but the purpose of this is to ensure that those service members who performed valorously were recognized at the appropriate level," an official with the DOD told the news organization.
It is undoubtedly one of the more unusual methods designed to help ease the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, but that doesn't mean it isn't effective. The papier-mâché masks Melissa Walker, an art therapist and coordinator of healing arts with the National Intrepid Center of Excellence at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, asks veterans to make after returning stateside from Iraq and Afghanistan are vivid, expressive creations.
"It's actually the first art directive they're introduced to as they come through the program," Walker told The Daily Beast. "These are servicemembers that sometimes have trouble verbalizing what they're struggling with and these masks, along with all the artwork [they] create, help to make their invisible wounds visible."
Representing their experiences in combat and their military identities, the masks are incredibly evocative. One described by The Daily Beast is wound with razor wire and its lips sealed by a silver lock, while another succumbs to the pressure of a tightening vice marked with the acronym PTSD.
The veterans' creations have made such an impact that the National Endowment for the Arts has decided to fund an in-depth look at 400 of the masks at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
Girija Kaimal, an assistant professor in Drexel's Department of Creative Art Therapies, told DrexelNOW that the masks have helped to create a bond between returning veterans.
"For some service members in the program, the masks become a 'visual community,'" Kaimal told the university's paper. "They see the masks and say, 'I'm not alone.'"
With so many veterans struggling to explain their experiences to families, friends and doctors in their life after service, the masks provide an outlet that doesn't require words.
"A lot of research will tell you that when you're in a traumatic experience, the part of the brain that controls speech shuts down," Kaimal relayed to The Daily Beast. "So having a nonverbal way – such as art – to communicate is key to understanding what they're going through."
Overlong wait times have been one of the Department of Veteran Affairs' biggest and most chronic problems for years. After facing criticism and scandals, the VA has instituted new measures to cut wait times by expanding veteran benefits to allow access to private sector physicians. Even with the recent changes, they have a lot of ground to cover.
According to News Channel 8 in Florida, the national office of the Veterans of Foreign Wars found that, after close analysis, 26 percent of veterans seeking treatment from private doctors still had to wait 30 days or more to get an appointment.
Why the long delays? Until a few months ago, the VA had treated the private sector as a pressure release valve – to be used only in case of emergency.
"VA has traditionally wanted to be everything for every veteran," a VFW senior legislative aid told the news channel. "And what the health care crisis taught is that you know that's not plausible, not very feasible for the VA to provide every instance of care to every veteran."
The Veterans Choice program, unveiled in late 2015, was meant to open up treatment possibilities and cut back on wait times and backlog. So far, however, the program has run into problems, in part due to miscommunication between the VA and Health Net, the contractor paid by VA to schedule appointments, about how many veterans would utilize the new option.
In North Carolina, only minutes from Fort Bragg, a new VA Health Care Center was just opened in Fayetteville. Legislators and VA officials alike promised that new center would brighten the outlook for local veterans, the Fayetteville Observer reported.
Fayetteville, with one of the nation's bigger veteran populations, had some notoriously bad wait times back in summer 2014, when Deputy VA Secretary Sloan Gibson first visited. The new 250,000-square-foot outpatient facility is a big step toward righting that wrong.
"You served our country. You wore the uniform."
That's how a new statewide television ad from the Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency begins, according to UPMatters.com. It is a simple message, but one that the agency hopes the state's more than 660,000 veterans take to heart as part of an effort to inform them of all options available.
According to WLNS 6, the ads have appeared on billboards and radio in addition to TV. They all direct servicemembers toward information regarding the veterans benefits and assistance programs available to them. Personnel – many of them with time in the armed forces – are on call all day, every day to answer any questions veterans may have.
The TV ad is especially effective. It features four veterans entering their life after service, preparing for job interviews, exercising and relaxing in retirement. Each of these is representative of education, employment, health care and quality of life – pillars crucial to the MVAA's mission.
"Assistance is just a phone call away," Jeff Barnes, MVAA director, told UPMatters.com. "This TV ad is a reflection of how our agency works to help veterans in all walks of life, whether they took off the uniform six months or 60 years ago."
"As an agency, we have been serving veterans around the clock for nearly three years, but we still hear people say they don't know about us or the services we provide," Barnes continued. "When you see the TV ad or a billboard on the highway, share it with your dad, your niece or your coworker who's a veteran. We want to use this ad campaign as a conversation starter about their service to our country and how MVAA can connect them with the benefit they've earned."