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LAWMAKERS AND CHURCHES SEEK TO HELP WEST
VIRGINIA SOLDIERS AFTER THEY RETURN HOME -- The
idea is to make sure vital information gets to
the eight
veterans centers in a faith-based approach.
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http://www.register-herald.
com/local/local_story_155182527.html
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Lawmakers, churches seek to help soldiers after
they return home
By Mannix Porterfield
Register-Herald reporter
CHARLESTON — Soldiers coming from war in the Middle East could find it
easier to learn about treatment and other benefits in a mission unveiled
Monday by the West Virginia Council of Churches.
The idea is to make sure vital information gets to the eight veterans
centers in a faith-based approach.
“The demands on military members and their families are not only
increasing, but are becoming more complex,” the Rev. Ricardo Flippin
told Select Committee B in an interims meeting.
Flippin said the Council of Churches is working with the Claude
Worthington Benedum Foundation in a statewide project that covers
pre-deployment, deployment and return.
By integrating the community agencies and the churches, Flippin said the
project would identify resources to help veterans with stress
management, substance abuse prevention and treatment, children’s needs
and financial aid and counseling.
A summit is planned June 11-12 in Charleston to get the network rolling.
One problem disclosed last month by state Veterans Affairs Director
Larry Linch is the difficulty in identifying veterans returning from
Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hoping to solve this, the committee co-chair, Sen. Jon Blair Hunter,
D-Mon-ongalia, led the panel into passing a motion asking the Joint
Committee on Government and Finance to approve $21,558 for a special
survey by the Division of Social Work, which will put up $5,243 from its
budget to a graduate assistant to work 10 hours weekly over the year.
“I think the services are there, but the veterans just don’t know, and
how to access the programs,” Flippin said.
Hunter recalled his own Korean War service when he was so eager to get
back home upon discharge he paid little heed to an explanation of
available services, suggesting this might be true of many returnees from
a foreign conflict.
Flippin, an Air Force veteran who served in Pleiku in Vietnam’s Central
Highlands in 1969 and 1970, cited an Army study showing one in eight
soldiers serving in Iraq suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and
that in 2003, of 155 injured soldiers, 62 percent sustained a brain
injury.
A study of the Gulf War revealed women suffered PTSD at twice the rate
of men — 16 percent to 8.
Flippin, veteran pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church, theorized the modern
variety of PTSD had its genesis in the Clinton administration with
fighting in Mogadishu in the “Blackhawk down” incident.
Four years ago, a Department of Defense study showed almost one-third of
a survey of female veterans applying for health care through the
Veterans Administration reported they experienced rape or attempted rape
while in service, he said.
With 1,200 veterans of World War II dying daily, Delegate Richard
Iaquinta, D-Harrison, said the VA is shifting its focus to Korean and
Vietnam War veterans, and soon will be getting a massive influx of
returnees from the Middle East.
Some 230,000 veterans live in West Virginia out of a total population of
1.8 million, putting a strain on VA centers, said Iaquinta, a
co-chairman of the panel.
“Beckley can’t handle theirs, and neither can Huntington and
Martinsburg,” he said. “It’s going to be a certain state of flux.”
The other co-chair, Delegate Barbara Fleischau-er, D-Monongalia, wrote
HCR75 for the panel to study the difficulties of troops returning from
Iraq and Afghanistan.
“We are concerned there are people who may be slipping through the
cracks,” she said.
Her resolution was rooted in problems in treating wounded troops at
Walter Reed Army Hospital.
But one member, Sen. Clark Barnes, R-Randolph, said constituents in his
district reported “very positive experiences” in treatment at Walter
Reed.
An immediate goal is to track down returning troops, Fleischauer said,
noting no one seems to even know the number of West Virginians killed in
the fighting, although one source has put the figure at 35.
“These are kids,” she said. “They’re 18. They thought they were
indestructible. Now, they’ve got half a leg.”
The Rev. Dennis Sparks, executive director of the Council of Churches,
said his group embraces some 600,000 residents in 14 member
denominations.
— E-mail:
mannix@register-herald.com
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Larry Scott --
