Veterans Services - Four County Mental Health Center

Service Member, Veterans, and Family/Dependents (SMVF)

Facts:

As articles shared by Alan Parsons of the ICC Vet Success Center show, wrapping a community around a Veteran and their family can only provide benefit to them and the community as a whole.
A recent study shows out of a cohort of 20 completed suicides in the Veteran community examined, 14 of them had experienced no significant contact with VA or behavioral health. An additional study shows an increase in completed Veteran suicides of 1.3% for those with contact to community and behavioral health supports, and a whopping 11.8% for those without that same contact and engagement.
Many resources exist for Veterans in the community that have no way to inform the subjects directly, so efforts are ineffective or underutilized.

Examples:

If a civilian agency is given a budget for upgrades and maintenance to an existing infrastructure and they do not utilize the entirety of that budget, what happens? The budget gets reduced by the unexpended amount at the next review cycle, right?
A local Veteran who had stagnated at a negligible compensation rate and engaged no Veteran-centric resources in our area noticed one of our flyers; and he met with me to see what he could qualify for. Soon after, he was connected with community partners in insurance, had an increased compensation and additional VA health benefits. Had he never come to see us, he would still be in his former position, getting no help.

What is the SMVF Navigator Role:

The SMVF Navigator takes the Veteran Services role as defined in the Certified Community-Behavioral Health Clinic model and expands it by bringing both additional modalities of service to the arena along with re-defining resource management and community partner networking to create as comprehensive a support for Veterans, currently serving Service Members, and dependent Family members as possible in a civilian agency. We will collaborate with established agencies and entities to improve coordination of care between VA and civilian providers capable of diminishing the burden for travel and financial expenditure using the current Memorandum of Understanding with VA that we possess; while simultaneously working to expand the ability of community providers to interact with the needs of the SMVF population to mutual benefit.

Duties:

One of the duties I will engage in is to work on improvement of resource access by our established Veteran and Dependent clients at Four County Mental Health. I will not turn away non-client Veterans during this early phase.
- Looking over files and identifying already-accessed services
- Looking at eligibility for additional aids available.
Another duty is to work with VA resources to expand Care Coordination and so improve the available variety of response to needs while decreasing the timeline of that response.
Yet another duty is to work in cooperation with not competition with available resource managers and agencies to improve the universal nature of access to and by Veterans. These include the VA, the KCVA, Veteran Service Organizations (like the American Legion, VFW, AMVETS, DAV and PVA), Veteran Centric Organizations (like the VBMC, CVMA, Catholic Charities SSVF and Salvation Army SSVF)
Other duties as assigned.

SEK Veteran Providers’ Coalition: A group of concerned citizens, providers and businesses is coming together to make a better life for Veterans and their family members in our area, and this may result in additional interest from Veterans in relocating here. Founded upon the principles guiding other successful asymmetric and atypical partnerships of community resources, this Coalition will support the inclusion of and community benefit from Veteran and Dependent population through collaboration in resources, abstaining from competition, support and referral access to increased services and abilities.

Definitions:

As anything in the Veteran and Military community necessarily will, Veterans’ Services has generated a host of acronyms and foreshortenings which can, for some, be nearly indecipherable. Therefore, I have provided this guide to the enclosed terms for ease of reading.

SMVF: Service Members, Veterans and Family members/dependents
VA: Veterans’ Affairs. When used in this manner, it covers both the VBA (Benefits) and the VHA (Healthcare) systems
KCVA: Kansas Commission on Veterans’ Affairs, which is the state agency created to increase access to and availability of Veterans’ resources via satellite offices in a several cities statewide, as well as perform quality control withy the forms filed on behalf of Veterans of the state
VFW: Veterans of Foreign Wars, a Veteran Service Organization of National Charter
DAV: Disabled American Veterans, a Veteran Service Organization of National Charter
PVA: Paralyzed Veterans of America, a Veteran Service Organization of National Charter
AMVETS: American Veterans, a Veteran Service Organization of National Charter
VBMC: Veteran Bikers Motorcycle Club, Chartered and Chaptered Motorcycle Club made up of Veterans and their Family Members and supporting Patriots
CVMA: Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association, Chaptered Motorcycle Association of combat survivors
SSVF: Support and Subsistence for Veteran Families, a pair of agencies operated by two separate organizations which support housing, utilities funding and food assistance for Veterans