America’s nurses are about to become the first line of defense in recognizing and treating symptoms of PTSD and TBI.

Today Michelle Obama announced an initiative by more than 150 nursing organizations and hundreds of nursing schools to train current and future nurses to recognize the injuries and care for veterans suffering from them.

The announcement is part of the first lady’s one-year celebration of her Joining Forces campaign. The program urges businesses and community groups to help members of the armed forces, veterans and their families.

Last year Mrs. Obama’s embarked a nationwide tour to drum up support for military families appearing at homeless shelters and on the popular Nickelodeon show, “iCarly.”

Last summer, the president challenged American businesses to hire or train 100,000 veterans and military spouses by the end of 2013. Already, 50,000 have joined the workforce and private sector employers have pledged to hire an additional 160,000 veterans and spouses in the coming years.

Dave Starling, president and chief executive officer of The Kansas City Southern Railway Company, said 14 percent of his companies’ new hires are veterans. Starling himself is a West Point graduate and served as a Cobra pilot. The skills he and other military members learn in the field are irreplaceable.

He said veterans tend to have a “strong work ethic, are team players with a high aptitude for learning, are disciplined and high motivated,” to name just a few attributes.

“We’re proud to hire veterans, not just because it is patriotic, but it is also good for our bottom line,” he said.

As companies prepare to hire more military members and their spouses, the new nursing initiative aims to help veterans recover and work toward filling those jobs.

Government officials estimate that one in six veterans, roughly 300,000 military members, suffer from PTSD or TBI. About half of those people are seeking treatment outside of military or VA health care centers, if they are seeking treatment at all.

The new initiative puts trained nurses not just in hospitals but in neighborhoods, said Capt. Brad Cooper, executive director of Joining Forces.

“In order to positively impact their healthcare we need to meet them where they are with nurses on the front line of the healthcare system,” he said.  “They are in a position to make a significant and positive impact.”

Amy Garcia, chief programs officer of the American Nurses Association agreed. She said one in every 100 Americans is a nurse. Veterans see them not just during a doctor’s visit, but sitting next to them in the pew at church, at school events and in the grocery store aisle.

“Our goal is to raise awareness through every nurse in the country to recognize the signs and symptoms and lower the stigma of getting care,” Garcia said.

The new training will use research-based strategies and treatments that are more effective than any tool medical professionals have had in the past to treat TBI and PTSD.

“We can take existing programs developed by the Department of Defense and the Veterans’ Administration and translate those into materials that can help nurses in their work,” Garcia said. “We are with patients 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We see the suffering and now we can do something about it.”

My son is nine years old. He has spent more than half of his life living without his father. That is the reality of deployment for many military children.

And though he attends a school that is 99 percent military, participates in a Cub Scout pack that is purely military and lives on base, he still struggles every time his father packs his bags to leave.

Deployment, and the enormous range of emotion that come with it, is not something easily talked about on the playground, in a scout meeting or in a classroom.

Last year, Operation Purple Camp gave him a safe place to discuss those feelings with other military children.

Every year the National Military Family Association hosts camps across the nation specifically for military children, called Operation Purple Camp.

The camp is free to attend and focuses on children who endure the hardships of deployment. There, they have the freedom to hike, laugh, sing, swim and enjoy the campfire like thousands of children at camps across the country. But here, they are free from the stress and hardships of military life that they face on a daily basis at home.

They also have counselors who grew up as military children themselves or who have been trained to help them address their concerns about deployment. Every child there knows how deployment feels. Every child there has a safe place to talk about their emotions if they want to.

Plus, the week-long camp is a lot of fun.

Registration began this week. To find a camp near you, please visit

http://www.militaryfamily.org/our-programs/operation-purple/2012-camps/

Student veterans often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. That is true. But what also is true is that student veterans are dedicated learners, leaders in student activities and contributors on campus.

Still, the conversation too often returns to PTSD and stereotypes. Classmates, and sometimes college administrators, veterans say, see them as one-dimensional characters on the verge of a breakdown.

The Jed Foundation is working behind the scenes to dismantle those stereotypes and give colleges the tools they need to help veterans with their transition from the uniformed ranks to the classroom.

“We need to be careful about the way we portray emotional health issues in the aftermath of war,” said Courtney Knowles, executive director of The Jed Foundation. “Some veterans will be at an increased risk for suicide, but it’s not fair to depict everyone who is making this transition as unstable and at-risk.”

The foundation was created about 10 years ago by a family who lost a son to suicide. As the family searched for answers, they learned there was not much collaboration on college campuses to address mental health problems and suicide prevention.

Now, The Jed Foundation has created several programs, while working with leading experts in the mental health field, that can be used by every college across the country. One of these free programs creates a website for each school that offers students mental health tools and details about programs available on their campus.

“We’ve just finished an online training tool for campus professionals that help them first of all understand the student veteran perspective and secondly, help them understand a little more about the emotional health challenges that some veterans may face coming back from deployment or combat,” Knowles said.

The foundation said veterans have expressed concerns that campuses are focused solely on real or perceived mental health injuries and are overly cautious of them.

“It’s not really the campuses’ faults,” Knowles said. “Part of their job is to look out for the students and spot potential problems. Sometimes in focusing on the problems, they are not seeing the opportunities.

“Everyone is talking about how they might have PTSD, but no one is talking about what they can contribute to the campus community,” Knowles said.

Student veterans, he said, are often more mature than their peers and have refined skills that make them better students.

And it’s not just campus officials who need training in welcoming home veterans. Often it is members of the student body as well who don’t know how to respond. Dealing with a civilian population after a combat deployment can be frustrating, Knowles said.

“If your job has been life or death and you are suddenly around students who are only concerned about ‘Jersey Shore,’ that may be frustrating,” he said. “What’s really important is anytime you have two different groups of people, there is a learning that needs to happen on both sides. We’re trying to get both sides to think about that.”

Want to learn more about The Jed Foundation? Visit,

www.halfofus.com

www.jedfoundation.org

When Lynnette Holly told her children to go find a quiet activity to do while she completed her homework, her request was rebuffed.

Instead of understanding the grind of daily homework, her children demanded to know, why it wasn’t finished. After all, they did theirs upon arriving home from school that day.

Lynnette’s answer was simple.

“Because if I sat in front of the computer all day, no food would get cooked, no laundry would get done, nothing else would happen,” she said.

That, she said, is the fun of balancing not just class work and duties at home, but also doing it all alone while her husband was deployed.

Lynnette worked toward her associate degree in accounting while her husband served a year in South Korea and several months in various locations.

At the start of each new semester, Lynnette said she set aside her quiet area for homework, made a schedule and set her goals.

By the end of the term, her quiet area had been overrun and the schedule was kaput.

“The kids are hungry, they’re fighting over something, three nights out of the week it’s eleven o’clock and everyone is still up,” she said. “That’s the hard part.”

For Lynnette, balancing school and family wasn’t her only challenge. The family survived epic storms when they PCS’d to Texas during which most of their clothes and personal items were destroyed. The storm damage limited her internet access. Soon after, her grandfather died and she broke her finger – days before beginning a course in keyboarding.

Quitting, Lynnette said, would have been easy.

“You have to remember your goal when you find yourself sitting there thinking, ‘What am I doing this to myself for’?” she said.

Success, she said, comes only when you accept that getting everything done means letting some tasks go.

“Realize that sometimes things are not going to get done around the house, accept that and move on,” she said. “If you didn’t get the laundry done, that’s fine. No one is going to die. The house is not going to fall down.”

Lynnette said she is a huge advocate of a simple but effective method: the to-do list.

Make your list every morning and if the task you are about to do is not on it, walk away.

“As you start scratching stuff off, you’ll see that you are getting stuff done. Then you can take some free time to do something for you,” she said.

Lynette not only now has her Associate’s Degree but is working toward her bachelor degree and is currently applying to work for the Transportation Security Administration.

Her accomplishments, she said, have helped her find her place in the world.

“I’m not just a mom. I’m not just a wife. As a person I hold a degree and that’s something you can be held accountable for,” she said. “This is mine. I did it myself.

“When I go out on base I’m Sgt. Holly’s wife. But when I go into an interview, I’m Lynnette Holly,” she said.

Lynette, who was raised by a single mother who worked tirelessly to provide for her, said part of her drive to earn her degree was to be a role model for her three girls.

“My mom was smarter than most people and she was only making $8 an hour while the new kid with a college degree is making $14. He knows less than she does, works less hours than she does and can’t contribute like she does, but because she didn’t have that piece of paper, she’s not going to get paid what he does,” she said.

“I want better than that for my daughters.”

Now, she said she urges all military spouses who want to pursue their degree to just go for it.

“This is fairly simple compared to deployments, being home alone with the kids and trying to figure out what to do next,” she said. “There are a billion and one excuses as to why you can’t do it. But there are a billion and one reasons why you should.”

It’s hard for many young military spouses to imagine that they would need to seek out a Veteran Center to help care for their husband – before they’ve even reached retirement age.

But the number of young veterans, some as young as 21, who require veteran medical services has skyrocketed with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Department of Veterans Affairs offers a wide range of services to combat veterans learning to re-adjust to the civilian world.

All service members who served in any combat zone are eligible for re-adjustment counseling, as are their family members.

Re-adjustment counseling is intended to help veterans and their families transition from military to civilian life.

The services include:

• Individual and group counseling for veterans and their families
• Family counseling for military related issues
• Bereavement counseling for families who experience an active duty death
• Military sexual trauma counseling and referral
• Outreach and education including PDHRA, community events, etc.
• Substance abuse assessment and referral
• Employment assessment & referral
• VBA benefits explanation and referral
• Screening & referral for medical issues including TBI, depression, etc.

The counseling is offered at all Veteran Centers throughout the country. To find the center closest to you, please visit,

http://www2.va.gov/directory/guide/vetcenter_flsh.asp

For families who want to talk to a counselor prior to visiting the vet center, you can call the Vet Center’s 24-hour confidential call center and speak to a counselor about your concerns.

Call 1-877-WAR-VETS (927-8387)

MILITARY FAMILIES REPAID FOR INCORRECT INTEREST RATES TOO

The five largest mortgage companies have agreed to an additional settlement for military families in addition to the $25 billion settlement to compensate families who were wrongly foreclosed upon.

Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Ally will be required to give military families a minimum of $116,785 plus lost equity and interest for violating terms of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.

The law prohibits companies from foreclosing on servicemembers without court orders on mortgages that were made before military service begins. The new settlement gives the same protection to all military members, regardless of when they began their mortgage. To qualify, the military member must have been receiving hostile fire/imminent danger pay and have been stationed away from their home within nine months of the foreclosure.

JP Morgan chase has agreed to give the families they wrongful foreclosed on either their home, with no debt owed, or the cash equivalent of the value of the home at the time of sale.

Servicemembers will also receive a settlement for any additional harm suffered.

Military families who did not lose their home, but were denied a lower interest rate after they requested one under the SCRA, will also receive compensation.

The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division will conduct a review with the mortgage companies to pinpoint military families who have paid in excess of 6 percent interest on their mortgage since January, 2008.

Mortgage servicers will be required to give those families a refund, with interest for any amount paid over 6 percent, plus triple the amount refunded or $500, whichever is larger.

If you think your SCRA rights have been violated, please visit the military legal assistance office locator to find help near you. 

After five deployments, my family has seen and tried a lot of ways to keep connected.

We’ve emailed. We’ve skyped. My husband has recorded himself reading books to the kids. We’ve made countdown charts. We’ve lit deployment candles. My kids have a daddy doll, a daddy blanket and a jar full of kisses to eat each night before he returns.

They are each sweet, cheesy and necessary in their own way. I’ve finally come across a deployment item that just weirds me out a bit: the heart beat pillow.

Check out Joanna Montomery's Pillow Talk.

Scottish designer Joanna Montgomery has designed a pillow that is intended to let you “feel” another person’s heartbeat. To use the high tech pillows, two people wear a special ring that transmits their heartbeat info to a panel. The panel is installed in a pillow and when the ring is worn the pillow pulses and glows in real time.

There are very few answers on the site to explain how exactly the heartbeat is transmitted to the panel. And the product is not for sale yet.

But a glowing, beating pillow? The sentiment is sweet. And I think my kids would be highly amused. But for me, when my husband is deployed, I need to get all the sleep I can before my kids wake up and I have to run just to keep up with them.

What do you think?

It is tax time again! Want to save yourself the cost of purchasing software to configure your taxes? Head online to www.militaryonesource.comwhere you can use the software for free. H&R Block offers free online tax filing services on the site to military families. Just go to the Military OneSource site and click on the tax service page. It will ask you to log on to Military OneSource, so if you have not signed up as a member of the site, do so now. Then it will direct you to the tax preparation software.

Things to know as you prepare your tax return:

• Questions? Call 1-800-342-9647 and ask to speak to a Military OneSource tax consultant. They are available seven days a week, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. EST. Send questions via email to TaxQuestions@militaryonesource.mil
• Military members can print out a W2 before it is mailed by visiting the MyPay site at https://mypay.dfas.mil. You will need your PIN number to access your W2 form.
• If your military member is deployed you must have a power of attorney from the IRS to file for them. Use IRS Form 2848, Power of Attorney and Declaration of Representative, found at www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f2848.pdf
• The IRS has a specific document with detailed tax information for military members at www.irs.gov/publications/p3/index.html

The IRS will extend filing deadlines for military members for these reasons:

• The service member is serving in a combat zone and receives hostile fire or imminent danger pay. The deadline for tax filing is 180 days after their last day in the combat zone or hazardous duty area. For a list of combat zones, visit www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=108331,00.html
• If the service member is hospitalized outside of the U.S. as a result of injuries suffered in a combat zone they also have 180 days after their discharge from the hospital to file. 
• Commands should notify the IRS of combat zone deployments but you can also notify the IRS of your status. Email the deployed member’s name, stateside address, date of birth and date of deployment to combatzone@irs.govor call the IRS main helpline at 800-829-1040.
• If the IRS sends a notice regarding a collection, return it to the IRS with the words, “Combat Zone” and the deployment date written in red at the top of the notice so the IRS will suspend the action. Write, “Combat Zone” outside the envelope too. 

 Hell hath no fury like a student whose tuition assistance has been yanked.

In October of 2011, the Marine Corps slashed the amount of money students were given each semester and drastically cut the number of classes they could take each year.

The Marines have since done an about face and restored all tuition assistance levels to those that existed before the cuts.

Marine Corps tuition assistance again covers 100 percent of tuition and fees, including lab, technology and distance learning fees (not to exceed $250 per semester hour and $4,500 per fiscal year) for both undergraduate and graduate students.

Students affected by the short-lived changes will have the costs covered that they would have otherwise incurred under that directive.

Despite the good news, the Marine Corps announcement came with a warning: there have been no increases to the tuition assistance funding for fiscal year 2012 and planners expect those funds to run dry long before the year ends.

For More Information

Last year 4,400 veterans and military spouses found work with the help of Milicruit, the national leader for virtual career fairs for veterans and military spouses.

The virtual job fair, which allows potential employees and industry leaders to connect across the miles via the internet, was a hit for military families who often cannot afford the additional cost of traveling for similar in-person events.  

This year, Milicruit has set a goal to help 10,000 service members and their spouses find employment.

Need a job in 2012? This should be your first stop.

Find the entire list of upcoming virtual events at: www.veteranscareerfair.com

The first live event happens Jan. 24 from 2 – 4 p.m. EST and will focus on companies located in Oregon, Washington and California.  www.veteranscareerfair.com

Other upcoming career fairs are:

January 26th - Live at the MOAA Spouse Symposium in San Diego, CA - http://www.moaa.org/spousesymposium/

February 23rd- 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. EST: www.veteranscareerfair.com
 

March 29th - SOACE-Unicruit event- Online University Recruiting fair- http://www.universitycareerfair.com/