The story in today’s paper and online got trimmed a bit more than I had hoped. (I can hear you asking: we get the newshole thing in the print edition, but why trim a story that’s going to be online? The answer has to do with how the stories we’re going to run in the paper are published to the web via shovelware dump at like 0100 each morning … )
Anyway, so I’m posting here the slightly longer version that I filed to my editor, with a little bit more about the Soldier and Family Assistance Center, and some reaction from Sen. Patty Murray. (Click here to see Russ Carmack’s photos from yesterday’s tour.)
Meantime there are other places to read for more information about the Warrior Transition Units. An Army news service story yesterday announced a new “whole person” initiative in the units. It has this interesting wrinkle from Brig. Gen. Mike Tucker, the assistant surgeon general in charge of care in the transition units:
Also as of March 1, Tucker said, Soldiers in Warrior Transition Units will not be allowed to waste time playing video games or watching mindless cartoons during duty hours. They are still Soldiers in the Army, Tucker said, and their one mission is to heal: to go to their appointments, take their medications and now participate in cognitive-enhancing activities or a structured-work program, if able.
“We want them to return to duty or return to be a citizen in society and be successful and be proud of their service,” he said. “If we’re not careful, we’ll raise a generation, 10-15 years from now, that will be panhandling because they don’t have any life skills.
“It’s important that we give these kids life skills. They all want to be something in life, other than what they are right now. They have to aspire. We have to allow them to achieve all they can be and provide them the structure at a time in their lives when they need it the most.”
One area I didn’t get a chance to get into in my story was to follow up on the staffing problems outlined in a Government Accountability Office report back in September. It showed the Army was having great difficulty filling key nurse case-manager positions in the units.
Lewis and Madigan officials said the battalion there as of early January was fully staffed. They hired 72 civilian employees to various jobs, including social workers, an occupational therapist, logisticians and human resources specialists, since June.
Madigan spokeswoman Sharon Ayala said the battalion has 24 civilian nurse case-managers, eight of whom moved over to the battalion from Madigan. Another 15 are Army nurses who were sent in by the Army Human Resources Command in January.
My story:
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