[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 38 (Wednesday, April 6, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3282-S3283]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. AKAKA (for himself, Mr. Rockefeller, and Mr. Conrad):
  S. 716. A bill to amend title 38, United States Code, to enhance 
services provided by vet centers, to clarify and improve the provision 
of bereavement counseling by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and 
for other purposes; to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.
  Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the ``Vet Center 
Enhancement Act of 2005.'' This legislation would enhance care and 
services provided through Vet Centers. Since their establishment over 
25 years ago, Vet Centers have become a safe place in the community 
where more and more veterans and their families have turned for 
assistance and services. This legislation would provide resources that 
Vet Centers need to serve and reach out to the growing number of 
Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF) 
veterans and surviving family members.
  The legislation would allow the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) 
to hire an additional 50 Global War on Terror outreach coordinators, 
strike the three-year authorization provision for these outreach 
workers, clarify that Vet Centers can provide bereavement counseling to 
family members including parents, and provide more funding for the Vet 
Center program.
  In February 2004, VA authorized the Vet Center program to hire 50 
OEF/OIF veterans to conduct outreach to their fellow Global War on 
Terrorism veterans. There are still many OEF/OIF veterans in need of 
readjustment services, which requires more workers. This legislation 
would authorize the hiring of 50 additional outreach coordinators to 
reach this underserved population of veterans. In addition, this 
legislation would also repeal the three-

[[Page S3283]]

year authorization provision placed on these positions.
  The number of brave servicemembers who die while defending freedom 
continues to rise, leaving many surviving family members in need for 
help. Under current law, VA has the authority to provide bereavement 
counseling to the immediate family. However, it is necessary to clarify 
that parents of a deceased servicemember qualify for this bereavement 
counseling and that such care could be provided at Vet Centers. This 
legislation would make the clarifications.
  A recent article in the Washington Post detailed a mother's 
experience after her son was killed in Iraq and how she finally felt 
relief at an unexpected place, a Vet Center. The article also provided 
information concerning the Vet Center bereavement program and discussed 
the need for clarification of the Vet Center bereavement care program. 
This article paints a clear picture of the distress that surviving 
family members endure as a result of the death of a beloved soldier. I 
ask unanimous consent that the text of The Washington Post article be 
printed in the Record.
  As the War on Terrorism persists, the number of veterans seeking 
readjustment counseling and related mental health services through Vet 
Centers will continue to grow. Experts predict that as many as 30 
percent of those returning servicemembers may need psychiatric care. 
For these returning servicemembers who have suffered psychological 
wounds, the stigma surrounding these types of wounds creates a barrier 
that often times prevents them from seeking the care they need. Vet 
Centers, which have licensed mental health professionals, provide a 
means to overcome this barrier because of the center's location in the 
community and because veteran staff members can relate to the 
experiences of the veterans seeking services. In 2004, Vet Centers 
cared for 9,597 OEF/OIF veterans and 2005 projections are that Vet 
Centers will see 12,656 OEF/OIF veterans.
  Despite increases in the number of veterans coming for care to Vet 
Centers, the budget for the program has remained stagnant. This 
legislation would authorize funding for the program from $93 million to 
$180 million.
  We must make the readjustment period for the returning service 
members and the surviving family members of deceased servicemembers as 
smooth as possible.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Feb. 24, 2005]

                 VA Program Offers Solace to Civilians

                           (By David Finkel)

       Her son had been killed in Iraq, and Hope Veverka needed 
     someone to talk to.
       ``It was so horrific, the pain,'' said Veverka, the mother 
     of Army Pfc. Brandon Sapp, who died in August when he drove 
     his vehicle over a remote-controlled bomb. ``I didn't want it 
     to destroy me.''
       Unable to sleep, Veverka, 45, tried a hospice-based program 
     for dealing with grief. Unable to stop thinking about the 
     person who was the last to see her son while deliberately 
     pushing a detonator, she talked to friends and attended a 
     support group for parents who lost children. All helped 
     somewhat, she says, but it was in an unexpected place--a 
     readjustment center for veterans--where she finally felt some 
     relief.
       ``These guys, they have served,'' Veverka said of the 
     counselors she sees weekly at the Department of Veterans 
     Affairs' Vet Center near her home in West Palm Beach, Fla. 
     ``They get it. I can just talk, and they understand.''
       More and more relatives of service members who died are 
     learning the same thing, that because of a new bereavement 
     program, vet centers are not just for veterans anymore. In 
     August 2003, as the number of fatalities in Iraq passed the 
     250 mark, the 206 vet centers across the United States began 
     offering counseling and bereavement services to immediate 
     relatives of anyone in the military to die while on active 
     duty.
       The program marks the first time that non-veterans have 
     been eligible for a benefit previously restricted to 
     veterans. Before the program began, civilian family members 
     might go to a vet center as part of a living veteran's 
     counseling but had to go elsewhere if they needed counseling 
     of their own.
       ``It's a big deal,'' said Alfonso Batres, chief of the VA's 
     Office of Readjustment Counseling. ``And the families are so 
     grateful that anything is being done.''
       The program, which is free and allows unlimited visits, had 
     367 participants in connection with 252 deaths as of Feb. 1. 
     Eighty-six of the 367 were spouses, 119 were mothers, 64 were 
     fathers, 60 were siblings, 37 were children and one was a 
     grandparent.
       Batres says the numbers would be higher, but privacy 
     concerns prohibit counselors from contacting people to see 
     whether they are interested in getting help. Instead, initial 
     contact must come from the family members.
       Typically, relatives are referred to the program by 
     military casualty-assistance officers, who are the ones to 
     notify them of the death of their loved ones. A civilian 
     organization called TAPS, the Tragedy Assistance Program for 
     Survivors, which offers around-the-clock grief counseling 
     and peer support--but does not have professionally trained 
     counselors as at a vet center--also refers people to the 
     program.
       ``It's really, really significant,'' TAPS founder and 
     chairman Bonnie Carroll said of the VA's decision to treat 
     family members. ``From our perspective, it has just been 
     revolutionary.''
       Batres says that implementing the program has not been 
     problem-free. Especially in the early months, he says, some 
     counselors complained that they already had more to do than 
     they could handle. Others were concerned that expanding the 
     centers' mandate to non-veterans could create a bad 
     precedent.
       The provisional status of the program has also been 
     unsettling to some. Batres says he had hoped to get the 
     program authorized by Congress, which would have given it a 
     sense of permanence, but instead it was approved as an 
     unfunded initiative at the discretion of the secretary of the 
     VA.
       Nonetheless, Batres says, as the months have gone by, the 
     nature of the work has changed the misgivings of his staff 
     into a shared sense of mission. ``It's akin to going to a 
     disaster site'' is how he describes the work. ``This is a 
     death site. It's almost like going into a sacred place.''
       Joe Griffis, a counselor at the vet center in Lake Worth, 
     Fla., agrees that this first venture into treating non-
     veterans is worthwhile. ``We're here to help the veteran,'' 
     he said, ``and when they've been killed, it's the closest we 
     can get to them to give them that service.''
       Griffis says he has treated family members connected to 
     five deaths, four of which occurred from enemy fire and one 
     by suicide.
       ``They come in with grief, with a great sense of loss, 
     often with guilt feelings about what they could have done, 
     angry at the government, angry at God, angry at the child 
     himself,'' he said of his clients, most of whom have been 
     parents.
       Rather than diagnosing a condition, he says, his goal is to 
     ``let them ventilate all of their feelings. Their anger. 
     Their grief. Their sadness. No matter what it's about. And 
     let them have a feeling of relief before they walk out of the 
     session.''
       Veverka, who is one of Griffis's clients, says that is 
     exactly what has happened to her in her weekly sessions.
       ``There was something lacking,'' she said of the support 
     groups she attended in the first days after her son's death, 
     where she found herself undifferentiated from the parents 
     whose child had died of leukemia and the parents whose child 
     had been killed crossing a street. ``It was only addressing 
     half of my emotions. I needed something with the military.''
       Try the vet center, someone suggested.
       ``So I went,'' she said of a place so familiar to her now 
     that counselors have hung a photograph of her son for her to 
     see every time she walks in the door, ``and it ended up being 
     the door I needed.''
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