The vast majority of veterans — more than 80% by estimate — in the Lehigh Valley do not use the Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare system, either because they are not eligible or have never applied. Instead, like the good citizens they are, they mostly rely on private insurance, Medicare Read more…
Veterans Sanctuary is dead, killed off by a lack of government-private sector cooperation, but Treatment Trends, Inc. persists in seeking ways to assist those veterans with profound drug and alcohol programs find a better life. Now it is seeking a Veterans Treatment Case Manager to aid veterans who are receiving addiction treatment in Keenan House and the Halfway Home of the Lehigh Valley in an effort to help them access community health, veterans support services, social and VA services. This part of a “veterans track” effort within the organization and has been recognized by the Office of Veterans Affairs, Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs with grant funding. (more…)
Just announced on 17 March 2015 and effective as of 2015, the VA has eliminated the use of net worth as a determining factor for both health care programs and copayment responsibilities. The intention is to make the program more accessible to low-income veterans. The VA estimates this may affect only 190,000 Veterans over a five year period, but VA estimates can be wrong. (more…)
One of the smaller, gold-nugget programs we help fund as part of our effort to assist veterans is Lehigh Conferences of Church’s Permanent Employment Program (PEP) because its vision entails assisting “chronically unemployed individuals to search for, and obtain, meaningful employment by providing barrier assessment, education, case management, and subsidized work experiences in the Lehigh Valley” – in other words, a holistic, work-oriented approach. In so doing, it can take a veteran who was once unemployed to a state of self-sufficiency through meaningful, permanent employment which does not have to be subsidized. (more…)
Attention, Lehigh and Northampton county veterans, children and unmarried spouses of military personnel killed in action, children of veterans — and high school seniors enrolling in a higher education institution’s ROTC program with the intention of entering military service, you may be eligible to receive one of eighteen, one-thousand dollar Read more…
A Co-Chair, Carole Reese, for our educational alliance called A’s for Vets (Academics for Veterans) wrote a Town Hall opinion piece for The Morning Call about LVMAC and its upcoming Veterans Education Expo on 28 February, which is primarily designed to assist veterans in receipt of the GI Bill in Read more…
Frankly, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania seems poor in distributing word or notifying of grant opportunities in the veterans arena. As a consequence, this grant opportunity has been extended beyond its original 13 or 14 February deadline. So, we are taking the unusual step of trying to spread the word, since they have only extended the deadline to 27 February.
An extension has been given to the following grant:
The Department of Military and Veterans Affairs (DMVA) is announcing the availability of up to $750,000 in competitive grants from funds appropriated for Veterans outreach and shall be used for programs providing treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and co-occurring disorders such as substance abuse for Veterans. (more…)
The key purposes of a GI Bill are to assist a returning military veteran in readjusting and retraining for new employment. While not all veterans have the need or seek the use of their educational benefits, approximately 25 per cent of returning veterans do within two years of discharge. It therefore behooves us to pay attention to their needs for us to reap the biggest gain for our society. Academics for Veterans, or A’s for Vets, intends to do just that; and it is about to conduct its first major event with that intention. The LVMAC alliance will conduct an education fair for military veterans and their families on 28 February, beginning at 8 a.m., at Moravian College’s Haupert Union Building. Click here for the details and on how to register while space is available. (more…)
The first Lehigh Valley indoor Stand Down will be conducted by VALOR Clinic Foundation on 28 February between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the El Shaddai Bethlehem Ministries, 529 East Broad Street, Bethlehem, PA. ### As of 8 February 2015
VA Announces Single Regional Framework under MyVA Initiative
Internal Organizations to Realign Their Existing Structures
As a result of last year’s scandals, Washington Headquarters announced on 26 January that is taking the first steps under the MyVA initiative to realign its many organizational maps into one map with five regions utilizing state boundaries to better serve military veterans. We will be part of Region 1 (the New England, Mid-Atlantic, and a couple of South Atlantic states). (more…)