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Duty, Reservists, Veterans • Michigan non-profit spending $2.5 million to design better ways to get services to veterans in San Diego County and San Antonio • San Diego County working groups targeting leadership and legal issues among others • Rick’s Blog: Do younger veterans have it too good to get involved? San Diego County Vets Get Unexpected Help By Rick Rogers DefenseTracker.com SAN DIEGO – A Michigan firm is spending millions on pilot programs in San Diego County and San Antonio to design a veterans’ services model that might one day become standard nationwide for the country’s 24 million veterans. The community-based initiative by the non-profit health care consultant Altarum Institute hopes to improve aid to veterans by aligning local, state, federal and non-profit veteran programs into a cohesive network that successfully reintegrates veterans back into civilian life. Currently in San Diego County – as elsewhere across the United States -- veteran services aren’t organized in a uniform way, which often leads to a duplication of services or, worse yet, gaps in services. “How can we better get the services to the veterans? How can we transition them back into civilian life better? These are some of the questions that Altarum wants to answer in San Diego,” said Gary Rossio, former director of the San Diego VA Healthcare System who now consultants for Altarum. “If we can figure this out in San Diego, maybe our model can be used as a blueprint across the country.” The Ann Arbor-based Altarum is spending about $2.5 million in San Diego and San Antonio – two areas with substantial veteran populations so that – in the multi-year project. In late 2009 Altarum analyzed veteran services in San Diego before concluding, in part, that state, local and federal agencies must jettison their “stovepipe mentality” to best serve both older and younger vets. Rossio said that Altarum’s also found that junior enlisted troops separating from duty often missed out on benefits because they simply don’t know about them. Local working groups are now tackling issues of: leadership development, access and outreach, seamless transition, legal issues and basic needs. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are leading some of these groups in a conscious effort to inject younger blood into the veteran’s community hierarchy. Nathaniel Donnelly, a former Marine now a student and assistant veterans coordinator at San Diego State University, heads the leadership development group. His goal is to help produce the next generation of local and national veteran leaders by getting the old guard to step back and the newer veterans to step up. “If the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion expect to survive, they must pass the torch down to the younger generation,” Donnelly said. “A lot of that has to do with the existing generation making room for the younger veterans if they want to attract a younger generation.” The thorniest issue, he said, might be convincing Iraq and Afghanistan veterans that they need to get involved. “The (VA) benefits are so good now that they are content,” Donnelly said. “How can we explain that if you don’t take part now that you might lose them in the future? We have all this stuff now and we have to find a way to keep it.” Below is edited information from the Altarum Institute website (www.altarum.org) on the San Diego and San Antonio programs. Altarum’s Mission Projects Initiative, launched in 2008, is a $7 million self-funded program which will study childhood obesity prevention, veterans care integration, and community health centers at multiple sites around the country. Today, nearly 24 million veterans and their families, located in 3,141 counties and 36,000 local government jurisdictions, rely on their communities to provide an array of support services. Since 2002, more than 870,000 service members have separated from the active military and the reserve component forces and transitioned to civilian life in their communities after serving in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. These returning veterans and the existing population of aging veterans have multifaceted needs that are generally met by a number of independently administered services. These needs include health care, vocational rehabilitation, employment and training, care giving, social services, housing, and independent living assistance. Current public and private initiatives providing these services to veterans and their families have limited resources, not only to administer their programs to a growing population, but to integrate their services with other programs being offered in the community. Yet it is the integration of these services that veterans and their families need most to help them navigate the complex system of care that currently exists. The increasing number of initiatives added to an array of fragmented organizations and services often leaves veterans and their families searching for the programs and services that best meet their needs. Our Approach Altarum Institute’s Veterans Community Action Teams Mission Project has developed a collaborative community model to enhance the delivery of services from public, private, and nonprofit organizations to veterans and their families. This model will be tested in San Diego and San Antonio to demonstrate the value of a community-based system of care in terms of improving the accessibility, scope and quality of care available for veterans and their families. Multiple government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and community-based organizations will collaborate in the project. Initial phases of the project involved research and development, outreach and communications and assembly of the VCAT team. Best practices in integration of services were identified from the literature, interviews, and lessons learned from previous Altarum community projects. Lastly, evaluation tools were developed and research protocols finalized. What We Hope to Achieve In collaboration with the community, the VCAT project will design and implement an integrated system of community services to meet the complex needs of veterans and their families. The model approach will acknowledge the community context in which veterans live and allow flexibility and creativity among the services in the selected community site. In so doing, the community will build its capacity to provide a complex array of health and social services to the veteran population. Veterans and their families need access to an integrated system of community services to achieve quality of life and economic security. With improved coordination and integration, a streamlined and responsive community system will enhance access to public, private, nonprofit, and voluntary services for veterans and their families. In turn, community services will be more efficient and effective, thus enhancing the population and community development. Altarum will disseminate the integrated community service model to encourage other communities to develop enhanced services for veterans and their families.
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