Disabled Veterans Research Paper

Words: 1329
Pages: 6

Empowering Disabled Veterans Using Peer Education Navigating the transition from military to civilian life is a difficult task for many veterans. Transition to civilian life requires servicemembers to adjust to new family dynamics, feelings of isolation due to the loss of camaraderie associated with their fellow servicemen, adjustments to their finances, as well as trouble finding employment opportunities (Blackburn 64). Now transitioning back to civilian life as a disabled veteran adds additional difficulties to this already onerous time. Homelessness is quite common among veterans who are discharged with a disability. Mental health disorders are the greatest risk factor for homelessness in veterans who are discharged due to disability. Post …show more content…
Tsail and Kelton found that transportation issues and stigma around seeking care are the top two barriers surrounding service seeking (508). Many veterans believe they should be able to deal with their disabilities on their own and not have to seek care (512). In light of this, the correlation between veteran homelessness and disability highlights the urgent need for assistance and action to address the underlying causes of this systemic problem and common barriers. To address the relationship between veteran homelessness and disability, numerous solutions have been implemented along with additional solutions being proposed. Each of these solutions comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. One proposed solution is to increase the rate at which we enroll veterans who are eligible for services and programs through the VA (Byrne et al., 691). While this would help increase the number of veterans with access to the resources they need, an issue with this solution is connecting veterans to the right resources. For instance, Byrne found that younger veterans typically need access to short-term assistance programs …show more content…
However, there is little evidence that this would specifically help decrease the rate of homelessness among disabled veterans. An advantage of this method would be that it would help increase efficiency in the VHA, resulting in increased savings. This increase in savings could help in the reallocation of resources, which could go towards providing more services to disabled veterans. However, implementing this solution would prove to be quite difficult, so more research would be needed for this to be a viable solution (Auerbach et al., 2009). Moreover, based on the barriers that these veterans face, a combination of the first two solutions would be the best approach to decreasing the rate of homelessness among disabled veterans. To increase veteran awareness of services offered, peer programs could be implemented along with community outreach programs. The implementation of peer lead programs that focus on educating disabled veterans on the services available to them to either prevent homelessness or help them out of