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Chicago Bureaucrats Cut Program: Freelance Hatchet Job

By VVAW

VA bureaucrats in Chicago have decided to do a little freelance hatchet job on Vietnam vets. Supplementing Reagan's national program of VA cuts, the locals have decided to throw Vietnam vets our of an extremely successful sub-contract counseling program.

The subcontractors are professional psychiatrists, psychologists and social welfare counselors who treated Vietnam vets with service-connected problems related to post-traumatic, delayed stress. Unlike the local vets centers, the subcontractors gave mostly individual counseling. They also visited vets in their homes, counseled on weekends or at night or in the mornings in order to fit into the work schedule of the veteran. They met with wives and with children, trying to hold families together.

Because of their ability to deal with vets on individual basis, they filled an important gap for those who did not want or could not respond to the group counseling approach of the Vets Centers, or for those who needed professional help instead of semi-professional counseling.

The Family Reintegration Consortium had branches on the north, south and west sides of Chicago, (as well as serving the suburbs) thus providing help to as diverse a group of vets as possible. They were paid on the basis of the number of vets they counseled, not for just sitting in an office waiting for vets to call. The number of patients had begun to grow primarily on the basis of word of mouth from vet to vet.

Clearly, they were providing a service needed since they were not allowed to publicize themselves as are other VA programs.

So what do the local CA bureaucrats do? In response to a relatively small national cut by Uncle Ron, they totally cut the program. Without an explanation to the vets involved; without a letter or phone call; without a public evaluation or study of Vietnam vets in the program. Once again, the bureaucrats leave the vets and their families abandoned.

Part of the problem seems to stem from unnecessary competition which some of the Vets Centers feel toward the sub-contractors. Some personnel at the Vet centers act as if a successful private program is a threat rather than a complement to their own programs. There is a game of body count played concerning how vets are served. Getting the name of a vet on the Center's serviced list enables them to prove their worth. Unfortunately, there is a big difference between helping a vet with civil service problem at work and dealing with the problems of delayed stress—the numbers do not equal out.

It was getting so bad that when Vietnam vets would go into the Centers to be referred to the sub-contractors for individual counseling they would be hijacked and directed into Center programs. Unfortunately, for the vets, almost all had dropped out by the second session.

Considering that the Vet Centers use TV and radio ads, are in the phone book and have storefront drop-in offices while the subcontractors are forced to work almost clandestinely one wonders about the type of job being performed by the Centers.

We have no way of ranking one VA program over another, but we can see when a program is clearly helpful to the vets that it serves; when a void in the needs of vets is being filled, that's a program that should be saved. We can only ask where individuals who would end such are program are coming from. And remember the VA bureaucrats in Long Beach, Ca a couple of years ago who abused vets to the point that one committed suicide and others camped out on the VA property to protest.

The tragedy of ending such a program is that it will only come to the attention of the public after some dismissed veteran can no longer hold it together without help, and makes the kind of headlines for which Vietnam vets have become famous. Only then—after it's too late— will people ask how could such a program have been ended.