The system that supports an estimated 245,000 service members as they transition out of the military each year is “fragmented and under-resourced,” according to a report released Thursday by the Council on Criminal Justice’s Veterans Justice Commission. The commission, led by former Secretaries of Defense Chuck Hagel and Leon Panetta, offers a thoroughly detailed plan of action for restructuring the transition process and placing new veterans on a track for greater success in the civilian world.
Among the flawed and inadequate programs the commission seeks to improve is the Transition Assistance Program. While required of departing service members, the course is neither uniformly attended nor demonstrably effective, the commission found. Another program, SkillBridge, can be effective in linking veterans with job training to prepare them for a civilian career, but because it pulls service members from their unit for 180 days, some commanders deny attendance due to its interference with “commanders’ primary and most essential responsibility — maintaining mission readiness.”
To signal that veteran transition is a “priority mission,” the commission recommends “improv[ing] delivery of services and creat[ing] accountability under a single office” by establishing an undersecretary for transition within the Department of Defense. The commission also recommends creating joint transition centers, where service members identified as needing extra transition support can leave their units to prepare for their military departure with greater access to therapy, support, and programming such as SkillBridge.
The commission recommends that the Department of Defense “adopt rehabilitative, evidence-based practices for its management of performance issues and certain military justice cases” because service members struggling to meet standards are “disproportionately more likely to be suffering from the invisible wounds of war,” including military sexual trauma, traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, or substance abuse disorders. Attempting to rehabilitate those who are suffering can reduce the use of other-than-honorable discharges, which affect a veteran’s ability to receive benefits and correlate with incidences of homelessness, adverse behavioral and mental health outcomes, and incarceration.
The commission also recommends that the Department of Veterans Affairs offer benefits to the cadre of veterans who have received other-than-honorable discharges. This change would bring the VA into compliance with the 1944 GI Bill, which mandates that the VA support all veterans who were not dishonorably discharged after service. Currently, nearly 750,000 veterans with other-than-honorable discharges “have been excluded from VA’s system of care and other benefits,” the commission found.
Noting that just 44% of veterans are enrolled in the VA system, as a secondary element of this recommendation, the commission suggests preemptively enrolling all new veterans in the VA healthcare system. The commission argues that the gap in care that some veterans face while learning to navigate the VA is particularly dangerous because veterans are “at a uniquely high risk for suicide” in the first year after leaving military service.
The problems with the transition system are best seen through the experiences of individual service members, such as newly retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Will Selber. By the time Selber began preparing for transition, he had witnessed several of his friends undergo harrowing struggles with alcohol, drugs, and the law after departing the military.
Set against becoming one of the 44% of veterans to struggle after transition, Selber developed his own intensive approach to transition more than a year in advance of his retirement. Selber worked on his emotional health by giving up drinking and undergoing an intensive inpatient therapy program. He also utilized SkillBridge, which he told the Washington Examiner was the “game-changer” that helped him find post-retirement work writing for the Bulwark. Finally, Selber completed the mandatory Transition Assistance Program, but he said it was “the epitome of a check-the-box DOD solution to complex problems” and “totally useless” for his personal transition.
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Selber noted that his rank protected him from many of the challenges younger service members face when they depart the military: “Many of them are disgruntled … and they just punch and leave. Those troops really struggle. They lose their identity. They lose their purpose.”
The support we give service members during and following their transitions should be a tangible demonstration that we care as deeply about their success as veterans as we did about their success and sacrifice in service. The changes the Veterans Justice Commission recommends would go a long way to revising a transition program that does little to fulfill the debt of gratitude we owe to those who defended the nation.
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance contributor to Fox News Digital and the co-host of The Afghanistan Project, which takes a deep dive into the tragedy wrought in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
