Jenniffer González advocates better mental health services for Veterans

Washington, DC - This Tuesday morning, Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón attended a public hearing of the U.S. House Veterans Affairs Committee to which she belongs, focusing on the findings reported by the Veterans Affairs (VA) Department's Inspector General about deficiencies in the operation of the Veterans Crisis Line (VCL).

The report released 20 March 2017, raised concerns regarding: inadequate responses to veterans with urgent needs; administrative structure of the VCL; operations and a lack of service quality assurance metrics; failure to implement prior Inspector General's recommendations; and inadequate training and supervision with regard to the social services assistants.

During the hearing, González-Colón called attention to the involvement of over 93,000 registered veterans in Puerto Rico and the need to obtain more data and demographic information not just limited to age, gender and location, for the over 500,000 yearly calls received by the VCL.

Last 28 of March the Resident Commissioner and 85 other Members of the House sent a letter to Secretary of Veterans affairs David Shulkin, requesting immediate action to address the findings of the Inspector General reports of June 16 del 2016 and the most recent of last march 20, which point to deficiencies in the veterans' call centers. In the letter, the Congress members call for the veterans to be served with dignity; they also highlighted the need to adopt a plan of action in response to VA studies that show a rate of as many as 20 veterans' suicides a day.

"Our veterans deserve a service with dignity, that really takes care of their needs promptly and efficiently, because they gave the best of themselves to defend our democracy and liberty. That both a full review of the protocols for receiving and responding to VCL calls and texts, as well as the naming of the corresponding management, are urgent actions, is part of what I have called for at the committee hearing. The Veterans Crisis Line call center is the first point of contact to obtain mental health services and it is not acceptable to be kept on hold in a call that can mean the difference of life or death. Once again I let the record show the discrepancies in the services provided for veterans in Puerto Rico and in the rest of the nation" the congresswoman pointed out.