click on graphic for larger view
Jun 15, 2012 - Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki recently announced the department would add approximately 1,600 mental health clinicians as well as nearly 300 support staff to its existing workforce.
VA estimates that nine clinicians and one support person will be hired to support mental health operations for VA Eastern Kansas Health Care System, which includes hospitals in Leavenworth and Topeka.
Funding has now been distributed to VA Eastern Kansas Health Care System and recruitment is underway.
VA has an existing workforce of 20,696 mental health staff that includes nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers. Currently, 285 mental health clinicians and support staff work locally supporting 37,020 veterans.
With each additional mental health care provider, a facility could potentially reach hundreds more veterans battling mental illness. New providers will join a team that is already actively treating veterans through individualized care, readjustment counseling and immediate crisis services. read more>>>
17 Haziran 2012 Pazar
VA Tailors Plan to Expand Mental Health Staff
Increase in Female Veterans Led to $300,000 Upgrade
This has been happening around the Country in many Veterans issues, Finally, and still with an underfunded Veterans Administration, thanks to the influx of federal funds from the Recovery Act and a very dedicated staff under Gen Shinseki trying to bring the agency into the 21st century especially with the ignoring by Country during the last decades of the 20th and into the first decade of the 21st. With two more wars added to the previous decades of needs and especially from those wars! One has to really wonder why those still calling themselves republican, like Sen. Shelby, jump in and take credit after doing nothing as they rubber stamped the cost of these present wars, off the books and with no bid private contracts and much more, and feel absolutely no guilty conscience while taking bows at ceremonies and speaking of all that patriotism, with them lapel flag pins, and support for the soldiers and veterans, while constantly obstructing the needed funds and in hearings and public blaming the VA, to the cheers of those they represent even some vets, for the budget.
June 16, 2012 - U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby on Friday helped celebrate the opening of the newly renovated women’s wing within the residential rehabilitation treatment program at the Tuscaloosa Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
The Republican from Tuscaloosa said that the new women’s wing was a bold step in the right direction.
“Women now make up a lot of our armed forces,” Shelby said. “They will have trouble just like our male veterans, and this is a recognition of this.”
Shelby, the guest speaker at the ribbon-cutting and open house, made his remarks on the fourth floor of the hospital, surrounded by medical center staff and veterans. He was introduced by David Gay, the center’s manager of residential rehabilitation treatment programs. read more>>>
Reparation for Vietnamese AO Victims
June 16, 2012- The Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign will continue its efforts to claim compensation for AO victims in Vietnam, said Susan Marina Schnall, the co-chairperson of the campaign.
Schnall, who leads a visiting delegation of the Public Health Science Committee under VAORRC, made her statement at a meeting with the Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin (VAVA) on Friday.
She said VAORRC would continue to request the US Government to provide comprehensive support to AO victims, clean up AO-infected areas in Vietnam, and force US chemical companies, which provided defoliants to US army for use in the Vietnam War before 1975, to pay damages to AO victims.
Nguyen Van Rinh, VAVA chairman, expressed his hope that US scientists would voice their political opinions about the AO-induced congenital anomalies that occurred to people of the second, third and fourth generations in Vietnam. read more>>>
VA threatens Orlando hospital contractor
Don't blame them at all, nor do I buy the contractors excuses or cross blaming the VA, in this age of the commercial and industrial construction industry and what's it's grown into in the past couple of decades. Very few general contractors have in house trades working for them, just office personal and only go down to the supervisors on the site, everything as to actual work is subbed out to very extreme low bid chase where the subs are left to work with fewer personal then needed and cutting back any overtime just so they have a bottom line profit. The subs and the trades are left getting the blame for the cutting corners for bigger bottom lines thus profits by the suits running the contract with very few to none ever actually working in the trades. I know, watched the whole industry go down hill, in the past some twenty years and especially the past decade, with stagnant wages and little to know benefits especially in no union shops for over forty years till not only me but most older experienced trades people were forced out, me now into early retirement I never sought unless I just couldn't do the work anymore, in the economic collapse and not even looked at to hire if they had the need for trades. But it isn't only in this industry but across the board in most business plans in the now some thirty year reaganomic new capitalism, especially the bigger they get and doing business under government contracts with the peoples money flowing their way! Oh and those peoples representatives, especially on the once (R) side of the isle, now all (T)'s, they won't see it that way, they too will lay blame on the VA, see they don't work for you, just watch the hearings or double speak on the tube or in person, all with them lapel flag pins shining along with their partioric support speak!
June 15, 2012 - The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is threatening one of the biggest contractors working on the Orlando VA Medical Center.
The department said the contractor must hurry up and get the job done, or lose its contract.
The VA said the hospital that was supposed to open in October 2012, but it may not open until summer 2013.
Meanwhile, both sides are blaming each other.
At a price tag of $665 million, the medical center is billed as anchoring the Lake Nona "Medical City."
“We will add to the Lake Nona synergy,” said Timothy Liezert, the VA Medical Center’s director. “We are big in health care obviously. We are big in research. We are big in resident education. All those things will complement the medical cluster currently going on.”
But VA officials said their contractor, Brasfield & Gorrie, is holding up the process.
“The best way to answer that is I'm a veteran so my true care and concern is for other veterans. So there's frustrations with the fact that we can't get this built for them,” said VA Senior Resident Engineer Bart Bruchok.
The VA issued what’s called a contract cure notice, which gives the contractor a written notice to hurry up and hire the people necessary to get the job done. read more>>>
15 Haziran 2012 Cuma
Military Exposures Site Updated
Check out the new design of the Military Exposures website. The user-friendly “4 Ways to Find Exposures” serves as a kind of virtual compass pointing visitors to information on a range of chemical, physical and environmental hazards during military service. Visitors can search by: related health concerns, wars and operations, exposure categories, and exposure topics A to Z.Giving Veterans a “Seat at the Table”
They had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, guess what the minority senate leader of the committee even showed up, richard burr, which he hasn't for at least the previous two, It covered a number of issues and Veterans Education was just one. Well the burr was up to his usual self of slamming the VA but on him trying to get a positive spin from a young vet on the private education schools, for profit, it wasn't gonna happen, the vet took him down a number of pegs as the burr tried and tried then just had to give up!!
June 11, 2012 - Senator Jon Tester is doubling down on his pledge to support Montana’s student veterans.
Tester is introducing legislation that will give veterans a “seat at the table” to provide feedback and improve Department of Veterans Affairs’ education policies. Tester’s reform bill will guarantee that the VA’s Advisory Committee on Education will include student veterans and college representatives.
“Veterans made tremendous sacrifices for this country and earned a seat at the table to make sure the education benefits they earned work for them,” said Tester, Montana’s only member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee. “My bill ensures that the voices of veterans and schools are heard and that smart, responsible decisions are being made with their input.”
Student veterans and Montana education officials tell Tester that they are rarely consulted by the VA or offered opportunities to provide feedback on VA education policies – like the distribution of G.I. Bill benefits. Tester’s bill will require the veterans’ advisory committee to report recommendations to the VA and Congress at least twice per year.
In addition to increasing participation from student veterans, Tester’s bill also requires input from service organizations like the American Legion and vocational schools that enroll veterans. read more>>>
VA Health Care Workers:
Because a Country served doesn't feel they need to Sacrifice, nor demand to, as they cheer on wars, Your 'Freedom is Free!', especially of choice, and occupations of others and thus call themselves 'patriotic' in numerous ways while 'supporting the troops'!
Richard Fleming served 12 years in the U.S. Army and has worked for the past 20 years at the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA's) Temple Texas hospital. He began with an entry-level job in the kitchen and, with training and education, became a surgical technician. He also is one of the thousands of modestly paid VHA workers whose jobs have been arbitrarily downgraded.
Nobody talked to me about it. I found out I was downgraded through a memo….I was downgraded by people who do not ever see what I do on a day-to-day basis. What have I done and what have my co-workers done to deserve this? No one gave me my GS-5 [job classification]. I earned it.Fleming was one of several hundred AFGE members and supporters from other unions who rallied today in Lafayette Park, across from the White House and near Veterans Affairs (VA) headquarters, to urge the VA to put a moratorium on the downgrades. read more>>>