Published: June 04, 2007 06:24 pm      

Lawmakers, churches seek to help soldiers after they return home

CHARLESTON — Soldiers coming from war in the Middle East could find it easier to learn about treatment and other benefits in a mission unveiled Monday by the West Virginia Council of Churches.

The idea is to make sure vital information gets to the eight veterans centers in a faith-based approach.

“The demands on military members and their families are not only increasing, but are becoming more complex,” the Rev. Ricardo Flippin told Select Committee B in an interims meeting.

Flippin said the Council of Churches is working with the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation in a statewide project that covers pre-deployment, deployment and return.

By integrating the community agencies and the churches, Flippin said the project would identify resources to help veterans with stress management, substance abuse prevention and treatment, children’s needs and financial aid and counseling.

A summit is planned June 11-12 in Charleston to get the network rolling.

One problem disclosed last month by state Veterans Affairs Director Larry Linch is the difficulty in identifying veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hoping to solve this, the committee co-chair, Sen. Jon Blair Hunter, D-Mon-ongalia, led the panel into passing a motion asking the Joint Committee on Government and Finance to approve $21,558 for a special survey by the Division of Social Work, which will put up $5,243 from its budget to a graduate assistant to work 10 hours weekly over the year.

“I think the services are there, but the veterans just don’t know, and how to access the programs,” Flippin said.

Hunter recalled his own Korean War service when he was so eager to get back home upon discharge he paid little heed to an explanation of available services, suggesting this might be true of many returnees from a foreign conflict.

Flippin, an Air Force veteran who served in Pleiku in Vietnam’s Central Highlands in 1969 and 1970, cited an Army study showing one in eight soldiers serving in Iraq suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and that in 2003, of 155 injured soldiers, 62 percent sustained a brain injury.

A study of the Gulf War revealed women suffered PTSD at twice the rate of men — 16 percent to 8.

Flippin, veteran pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church, theorized the modern variety of PTSD had its genesis in the Clinton administration with fighting in Mogadishu in the “Blackhawk down” incident.

Four years ago, a Department of Defense study showed almost one-third of a survey of female veterans applying for health care through the Veterans Administration reported they experienced rape or attempted rape while in service, he said.

With 1,200 veterans of World War II dying daily, Delegate Richard Iaquinta, D-Harrison, said the VA is shifting its focus to Korean and Vietnam War veterans, and soon will be getting a massive influx of returnees from the Middle East.

Some 230,000 veterans live in West Virginia out of a total population of 1.8 million, putting a strain on VA centers, said Iaquinta, a co-chairman of the panel.

“Beckley can’t handle theirs, and neither can Huntington and Martinsburg,” he said. “It’s going to be a certain state of flux.”

The other co-chair, Delegate Barbara Fleischau-er, D-Monongalia, wrote HCR75 for the panel to study the difficulties of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We are concerned there are people who may be slipping through the cracks,” she said.

Her resolution was rooted in problems in treating wounded troops at Walter Reed Army Hospital.

But one member, Sen. Clark Barnes, R-Randolph, said constituents in his district reported “very positive experiences” in treatment at Walter Reed.

An immediate goal is to track down returning troops, Fleischauer said, noting no one seems to even know the number of West Virginians killed in the fighting, although one source has put the figure at 35.

“These are kids,” she said. “They’re 18. They thought they were indestructible. Now, they’ve got half a leg.”

The Rev. Dennis Sparks, executive director of the Council of Churches, said his group embraces some 600,000 residents in 14 member denominations.

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com