The Marshall County Commissioners heard the quarterly report from Veteran Service Officer Pam Schweitzer Betz.
Betz has been front loading veterans that are without heat and homeless veterans that have late stage cancer; she was unable to prepare numbers.
She has had to turn away veterans from Michigan. Fort Wayne is now sending her veterans.
The Disabled American Veterans (DAV) at the Council on Aging has brought in John Rodriguez from East Chicago to help process DAV claims. Rodriguez signs them up with the DAV, assists with a third party release, and then sends them to Betz to process the claims. Betz has had to turn those referrals away because Rodriguez is their VSO and the work cannot be duplicated.
Three DAV members have obtained disability claims training through the DAV and are able to process disability claims. She did offer to answer questions for them, but once they sign them up with the DAV they need to handle those claims themselves. Betz does not want the liability for anyone she doesn’t complete the whole process for from start to finish.
Betz has met with Social Workers at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Clinic and they apologized that they are sending so many veterans to Betz but they have nowhere else to send them.
Betz reported that many veterans are trying to submit their own claims online and when that process fails they come to Betz for assistance.
Betz prioritizes Marshall County veterans even if she has to reschedule veterans that are referred from other counties, states or regions. She is scheduling out to January.
Other counties are facing similar challenges with a high workload or VSOs who are approaching retirement. Some VSOs have assistants to help process claims.
President Stan Klotz asked Betz to prepare recommendations on how the Commissioners can support her to be communicated during her annual evaluation including assistants.
Klotz asked if mental health issues are adding to her challenges; she confirmed that she had security in her office twice last week. One of the individuals was not a veteran. One was a veteran who would not leave and was in her office over two hours; his disability is not from his time in service.
Klotz said, “Thank you very much for what you do for our veterans.”
