By Daphne Jackson
A local veteran assistance program plans to offer veterans an increased range of services, thanks to a new, more spacious location at 217 N. 3rd Street in Hamilton.
Veterans’ Services Officer Mike Warner, who has been running the Valley Veterans Service Center for about a year, said the extra space has become necessary as the number of veterans seeking assistance at the center has increased.
“When I started last March, there were only about 250 and now we’re up to over 500,” Warner said. “It’s been quite a growth, which is why we’re moving to the new space. Meeting veterans’ needs…being able to facilitate their needs, we needed more office space. So, we were able to find this space, and this is about three or four times bigger than what we currently are operating at. We’ll have more offices to meet with veterans one-on-one, to maintain their privacy.”
Warner said the center serves veterans in as many ways as possible, though they primarily focus on helping with issues regarding the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) system.
“Our job is to serve veterans of Ravalli County, and make sure that they get the support they need by helping them navigate the VA system, and get through the bureaucracy of the VA system,” Warner said. “This also extends to their dependents or their family members with helping them navigate the VA system after a veteran’s passed, or getting veteran care that they may need. We mostly stick with cases and claims, but we pretty much help veterans with anything that they may need. If they come in and ask me a question and I don’t know the answer, I will learn how to do it.”
Warner, the only full-time employee at the center, said it is challenging to ensure that the seven part-time employees, most of whom are work study students from the university, are knowledgeable about the right information.
“A lot of problems that I see is that people don’t always get the correct information, or they don’t know the information, so us being a hub (where) people can get the information that they need that is correct, and the direction to go, is important to me,” he said. “That’s the biggest challenge that I have, making sure I have the staff available to answer those questions and meet with those people individually. Currently, as I said earlier, we’re dealing with about 580 active veterans right now. In Ravalli County, according to the VA’s reports, there’s over 5,400 veterans in Ravalli County. So we’re not even touching a quarter of what is in this valley. And that only includes veterans that the VA is tracking currently.”
Warner said, based on 2010 census numbers for veterans and their dependents, the center could potentially need to serve somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 people.
One aspect of the new office Warner said he is particularly excited about is the new resource room, a feature that didn’t exist in the center’s previous location.
“The resource room is basically a veterans’ area where they can meet with each other,” he said. “It’ll have a library in it with books, there’ll be a TV, hopefully some gaming systems, computers for veterans to use, basically a place for veterans to come and hang out with each other, and share in each other’s company. If they just want to come and sit and do a crossword, or if they want to come and watch something on the TV, I want them to have that space available to them, and their dependents as well.”
Warner said he wants people to know that the Veteran Service Center is available, and eager to help, whenever possible.
“If they have any questions whatsoever… or they’re looking for something, even if we don’t provide the service here, we can point them in the right direction and get them to someone who can help them,” he said. “That’s why we’re trying to get more office space; so we can have those private conversations if people want to. None of the information we get is given to anybody else, so if someone wants to come in, and they don’t want to give me their name, they just want someone to talk to, that’s what I’m here for.”
The Valley Veterans Service Center’s new location in Hamilton is 217 N. 3rd St., Suite L, phone 363-9838.