VA Program Offers Solace to Civilians

[Rose Siding]

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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."
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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.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48367-2005Feb23.html