PORT ANGELES – Clallam and Jefferson County veterans are about to get a huge upgrade in services thanks to a state grant that will allow the hiring of a full-time federally accredited Service Officer.
Jeff Reyes with the Northwest Veterans Resource Center, speaking Thursday on the Todd Ortloff Show, says it’s going to be a game-changer for veterans trying to find their way through what can seem like an endless maze of government red tape.
“This individual as you said, it’s going to be a full time person that can be there to assist these veterans. They’ll have set hours, set times to be there at these places to do this sort of work for these veterans. And being accredited is quite a bit different than a certified post officer. An accredited service officer can actually access the VA systems themselves and look and see the status of a veteran’s claim. That’s huge.”
Only four counties in Washington state received these grants, based on need. The state was looking for counties that have less than 100,000 people and are underserved based on the population’s percentage of veterans.
Clallam and Jefferson Counties will be sharing the service officer’s time, and Clallam County’s Rich Meyer says they’re particularly concerned about making sure west end veterans get plenty of attention.
“The design of the program is it’ll be in several places. Obviously, the Veterans Center is the the hub of where we do most of our veteran activities in the county. But because we want to serve the west end as well, we’ll have a set location out there and we’re still determining what’s going to work best for obviously in Jefferson and Clallam County rather than have all the veterans on the west end drive a couple hours into Port Angeles, we’ll send the veteran service officer out there and service our vets in that area.”
Reyes says less than 25% of Clallam County veterans are enrolled in federal veteran’s benefits and services, which has put undue stress on our county and state resources.
Skagit County reported with their Veteran Service Officer, veterans received an increase of over a million dollars in federal benefits over a two-year period.
The grant term for the new officer here will run from this coming January 1 through June of 2021.