Independent Perspective 1760 with Julie Andrews Krieger on the expansion of Services with Veteran Directed Care

Host: Welcome to Independent Perspective, a public affairs presentation of Western New York Independent Living (WNYIL). Our guest today is Julie Andrews Krieger, director of Taking Control program at WNYIL and I'm your host Ernie Churchwell. Welcome back to the program, Julie.

Guest: Thank you for having me.

Host: It's our pleasure. Our regular listeners may recall that Julie was on our program recently talking about the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance program, which we've had for a number of years. However, there is now a new wrinkle that we've just been authorized for called Veteran Directed Care, which works a similarly but a little differently. Can you tell us how that works and what it does for the veteran?

Guest: I sure can, Ernie, thank you. So recently the President outlined an executive order that mandated that the Veterans Directed Care program was to be implemented in approximately 100 VA medical centers by October of 24. And because we're an Independent Living Center, this allowed us to be qualified to provide the Veteran Directed Care services. They're very similar to what we're offering through the Taking Control, Consumer Directed Personal Assistant Services (CDPAS), and the slight difference is that there's more effort and a little extra assistance on the front end with the veteran to do a functional needs assessment and to identify all of the goods and services needs that the veteran will have. The veteran will work with someone who's called a person-centered counselor. Through the Taking Control program and then they will together work on a spending plan to cover all of the potential goods and services. Those will be submitted to the VA Medical Center here in Buffalo for review and approval. When that's approved, then the veteran will have contained in their spending plan the personal assistant services. At that point, they'll be able to do exactly what our CDPAS consumers do, which is to recruit time and task manage and to even terminate their personal assistants.

Host: Ah, so it bears a lot of similarity with CDPAS, except that we've got this additional layer of the Veterans Administration being involved there. How do you think that that will affect the ultimate services that the customer that is the veteran has?

Guest: I think this will allow a greater degree of empowerment for the veteran. There are many services that the VA offers. One thing that we will be very much focused on with the Veteran Directed Care program is to ensure that when we're interacting with our veterans that we're well knowledgeable of military cultural competency and that we can empower the veterans to be able to work on whatever goods and services that they need to be able to improve their independence, living in their home and community.

Host: I dare say I'm excited that we are able to serve individuals who had previously been in the US Armed Services because we owe a heck of a lot to those individuals, and you might call this sort of a way to pay it back since they are getting these services through an Independent Living center, that means there are services beyond CDPAS that they can avail themselves of, correct?

Guest: So, when we identify with the veteran that they may have an additional need, they and this need may, may or may not be met through the VA program itself. We can certainly offer to the veteran a referral to the additional programs that are found at the Independent Living Center, we're really highly motivated for this Veteran Directed program. As you know, the CEO of WNYIL is himself a disabled veteran. So, we have a lot of interest in providing these services to the veterans in our community.

Host: Would you believe we're out of time? How can people with questions reach you?

Guest: Very easily at telephone number 716-836-0822 extension 151.

Host: Thanks so much for being with us, Julie.

Guest: Thank you.

Host: You've been listening to Independent Perspective, a public affairs, presentation of WNYIL. Our guests today were Julie Andrews Krieger, director of the Taking Control program at WNYIL, and I've been your host Ernie Churchwell.