Valley veterans get helping hand

Bringing services to those who’ve served their country – that’s the idea behind a year-in-the-making drop-in clinic next week in Sonoma.
“There are veterans here in their 80s who may qualify for benefits and not know it,” Sonoma County Vet Connect spokesman Tom Benton said Thursday, adding that the same goes for their younger counterparts just back from Iraq and Afghanistan. “We’re really concerned about returning vets.”
Benton’s colleague Joe Seefried agreed. “They’re as elusive as we were – as Viet Nam vets were,” he said, explaining that both groups share at least two other things in common: a wariness of government programs and a strong desire to put their military lives behind them. “We need to reach out to them and let them know that these things are out there and available to them.”
Thursday’s clinic runs from noon to 4 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 20, at the Sonoma Valley Veterans Memorial Building, 126 First St. E., Sonoma. Representatives will be available from Sonoma County Continuum of Care, the Santa Rosa Veterans Adminsitration Clinic, Sonoma County Veterans Service Office, Sonoma County Department of Health Services and the North Bay Veterans Resource Center.
Sonoma County Vet Connect is a subcommittee of the federal Continuum of Care program which began 25 years ago as “a community-based, strategic plan to reduce homelessness,” according to the Web site of the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Benton said the local Vet Connect subcommittee formed in November 2007, when county organizers and service providers realized they were missing an essential piece of the social-services puzzle – “Who better to know how to reach homeless veterans, than veterans who’ve been homeless?”
Currently, Vet Connect is providing three drop-in clinics, with one open every Tuesday morning in Santa Rosa. Another is this Thursday in Guerneville. Of the estimated 35,000 to 40,000 veterans in Sonoma County, Vet Connect has only reached one to two percent since May – and that mostly by word of mouth, since Vet Connect is built on a “vet to vet” approach.
For more information, call Ted Sexauer at 707.337.4518 or Tom Benton at 707.935.6662.