Went to Buffalo today to see their Veterans court. I'm so excited! It's wonderful how they do it and with all those vets involved (the courtroom was just filled with the "program" vets and volunteer mentors, VA staff, etc) their whole operation goes off with military precision. Right in the courtroom is everything the veteran needs to get services. There's a person from the med ctr with the classified computer looking up dd-214 info and making the applications for services right on the spot, they can start the process to upgrade discharges and/or correct dd-214 errors, there's somebody from VBA (benefits) getting the process started if there's possibly disability involved, there's the VAMC making appointments and registering the vet for sessions, finding a bed if they need inpatient treatment, there's a service officer there to advocate for the vet (they use the VFW, same as we plan to), there's the Vet Ctr homeless coordinator there to handle the extraordinary circumstances that the homeless vets have like shelter and bus passes. (One guy today had been picked up for vagrancy and by the time he left court, instead of going back to jail or being dumped back on the sidewalk, he left with a place to actually live - a group apartment - a monthly bus pass, an appointment for evaluation at VAMC and all kinds more dignity than he came in with. You could see him standing up straighter and straighter. It was wonderful) Every week there's follow ups with vets already in the program and they come back and check in. They don't leave without a chat with one of the volunteer mentors who are all veterans themselves(matched to them by war, sex, age, branch of service). Today in Buffalo there was a vet that was "graduating" from the program. She got a standing ovation. The whole thing made me teary. The most encouraging part is that here in KC we have all the same veterans groups on board for our program so there is no reason ours can't be just as successful as buffalo. We do need to hire a project manager - sort of a liason between the court and the VA (the impartiality of the courts prevents us from advocating for the "defendant" so there has to be a go-between. Judges also are precluded from fundraising, but the liason would not be). The city really doesn't have the money for the position, but we were told that Senator Kerry's bill passed and there is grant money available to any court in the country that is setting up one of these veteran diversionary courts. I'll look into it this week and hopefully we can get some of that to hire a PM. It's such an exciting project, I can't wait for it to get going in KC.