Partnering to Help Our Military Heroes Come Home

By Greg Jenkins 

Article for Racing Toward Diversity, describing partnership between inQUEST’s Veteran Services Practice and H.E.R.O.E.S. Care 

inQUEST Consulting, a full-service provider of next-generation diversity solutions, includes within its suite of offers a Veteran Services Practice (VSP). In addition to partnering with businesses to help them successfully hire, integrate and retain veterans in the workforce, inQUEST’s VSP reaches out and partners with organizations that directly support veterans. H.E.R.O.E.S. Care is one such organization, making a name for itself by efficiently and holistically supporting military families and veterans before, during and after deployment. 

Here, Greg Jenkins, U.S. Army soldier (retired) and inQUEST consulting’s senior partner in charge of the VSP, interviews Dave Woolley, H.E.R.O.E.S. Care board of directors vice chairman, about the work H.E.R.O.E.S. Care has done and continues to do to help veterans, communities and even employers succeed together. Let’s dive in to their discussion. 

Greg: Dave, what can you share about how H.E.R.O.E.S. Care works, and what the organization is trying to achieve? 

Dave: The mission of H.E.R.O.E.S. Care is to help military personnel and their families meet the challenges of deployment. When a spouse, partner or parent is gone for an extended period of time the whole family faces stressors civilians typically do not encounter. We are here to try to make that journey easier. H.E.R.O.E.S. stands for Homefront Enabling Relationships, Opportunities, and Empowerment through Support. 

H.E.R.O.E.S. Care works with three partner organizations. Stephen Ministries is a non-denominational organization of more than 400,000 specially trained caregivers that amended its mission so its members can become H.E.R.O.E.S. Care volunteers. They are our exclusive caregivers. In addition to their rigorous Stephen Minister training, they are specially trained to understand the effects of deployment experienced by military members and their families.

 “Give an Hour” recruits mental health providers to donate at least an hour of their time each week to support military families. Thanks to Give an Hour, H.E.R.O.E.S. Care coordinates high quality counseling and mental health support to service members, many of whom come home with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), or develop suicidal tendencies. 

Finally, the Military Spouse Corporate Career Network (MSCCN) is an award winning, national job training and placement service founded by and for military spouses. MSCCN helps employ military spouses while meeting their unique needs—often these spouses need to work from home, part-time, because of child care responsibilities. Or, if their service member comes home severely injured the spouse must devote significant time to caregiving. MSCCN is able to work around those boundaries to help spouses gain meaningful employment. 

These three groups form what I’d call the core of H.E.R.O.E.S. Care, and we provide a wealth of other services from that starting point. 

Greg: Do you serve any and all military personnel and veterans? How can a military family get support from H.E.R.O.E.S. Care? 

Dave: We serve those who have deployed, with a focus on personnel from Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq) and the Global War on Terror (encompassing all Gulf War conflicts). 

To tap into H.E.R.O.E.S. Care services a family only needs to sign up. Once enrolled, the family can be  assigned a  caregiver at their discretion—from Stephen Ministries—who makes initial contact and sets up an ongoing schedule for checking in, assessing the family’s needs and coordinating community and program partner efforts to meet those needs This might be monthly, weekly or any timing the family chooses. 

Greg: We’ve touched on employment and mental health. What are other kinds of support can H.E.R.O.E.S. Care give? 

Dave: H.E.R.O.E.S. Care is there to provide emergency, financial and material aid, mental health care, job training and job placement help. That seems pretty cut and dried, but we cover a lot of ground within those buckets. 

For example, beyond straightforward financial aid the Missouri H.E.R.O.E.S. Care team provides food. We have five food pantries located throughout the state. All you need to get into these food pantries is your military ID—and with that, in one visit military families can receive enough non-perishable food to last a month. In Missouri, we provided 3,200 families in 2012 with 117 tons of food. Thanks to our relationships with food banks and economies of scale, H.E.R.O.E.S. Care provides that food for less than 6 cents per pound. 

Greg: That’s outstanding. It makes me wonder, is there anything H.E.R.O.E.S. Care does not do? 

Dave: Generally speaking, we find a way to get it done. If it’s a small need, such as a spouse needing a ride to a medical appointment, the Stephen Ministries congregation can step up and take care of it. For bigger things, say, a roof that needs repairs, the caregiver will coordinate with H.E.R.O.E.S. Care to provide funding. Our philosophy is “mission first.” We partner with other agencies and do whatever it takes to get the job done. 

We had a pretty powerful example recently of a military family in crisis. During deployment the husband worked in an environment that caused him to develop leukemia. His spouse is recovering from a gastric bleed. This family has two children: a hearing impaired daughter and an autistic son. Many challenges. They are struggling, but they want to continue living in their community, despite the difficulties. All they want is a modest home that is near family and the resources available in the local school system to meet their children’s needs. Thanks to a generous donor, this family will have that home. 

But what we do goes beyond quality of life. In many cases we are saving marriages and lives. 

Sticking with the state of Missouri, where H.E.R.O.E.S. Care got its start, here are some compelling numbers. Some 50,000 military families live in the state. At any given time, 5,000 of them are affected by deployment. Of those 5,000, some 500 families will need the support we provide at H.E.R.O.E.S. Care. And then the most compelling number: 50 of those deployed military personnel will attempt or succeed in taking their own lives. 

We like to say we reach the 50,000 to support the 5,000, to sustain the 500 to help prevent the 50.  Since 2009, the program has stopped at least 11 suicides. Before our program took hold, Missouri was the suicide capital for military personnel—but no longer. At least 50 marriages have been saved as well. These numbers likely are much higher. Due to the confidential nature of caregiving, we are made aware of these scenarios only if the person receiving services volunteers the information. 

Greg: Those are powerful results. 

Dave: Since 2009 we’ve spread to 16 states, with more than 2,000 Stephen Ministry caregivers. Thousands more people are engaged through the partner agencies. Our strategic plan calls for extending H.E.R.O.E.S. Care to all 48 contiguous states by the end of 2015. 

Greg: Let’s shift gears a bit and talk about how you help with employment. 

Dave: Right. One of the core things H.E.R.O.E.S. Care does is, via MSCCN, help spouses find employment, as we said up front. 

We also help returning personnel find employment. A lot of that is simple skill translation. A returning service member who says he or she was an “88 Mike” might be viewed as a “truck driver” because, broadly speaking, that’s what the job is. But an employer might not know that “88 Mike” means the person was a sergeant who managed a platoon of 20 to 40 personnel, responsible for their welfare, safety and combat training, not to mention vehicle maintenance. We can help translate “88 Mike” into “managed a tightly focused, skill- and safety-oriented team.” 

What’s more, we’re here to help employers bridge that gap, too. One of the most obvious adjustments an employer can make is to include a veteran on its recruiting and personnel management teams. 

We’re also linked to tools such as the HERO2Hired career website, h2h.jobs, essentially a “Monster.com” for military personnel. Posting jobs on that site is entirely free to employers, giving them access to the full pool of returning military veterans. The site is an incredibly robust job pipeline, including a Military Occupational Special (MOS) converter tool that automatically translates things such as “88 Mike” to terms that resonate in the business world. 

Greg: Aside from hiring veterans, what more can employers do to show their support for our returning heroes? 

Dave: H.E.R.O.E.S. Care has its finger on many initiatives, both local and national. By connecting with us, employers can find ways to provide support. Businesses can offer either material aid—such as unused product or stock that is sitting on shelves—or financial contributions. 

For example, Monsanto had about 700 computers that no longer were needed, but instead of paying to have them recycled, Monsanto donated them to H.E.R.O.E.S. Care. Monsanto received a receipt for the charitable donation. The computers were repurposed in support of veteran job fairs, given to military families and shipped overseas to the deployed. 

The military cannot reach out to ask corporations for help. H.E.R.O.E.S. Care acts as a trusted conduit, matching donors to military members and their families who have a need. 

Greg: You certainly offer an outstanding service, not only for military families but for communities and even corporations. As a veteran myself, I truly appreciate everything you do.

 Dave: We enjoy what we do here, and work hard to do it well and efficiently. None of the members of the staff ever served in the military. H.E.R.O.E.S. Care is our way of serving. 

To contact H.E.R.O.E.S. Care, send an e-mail to: president@heroescare.org or go to www.heroescare.org and use the ‘Contact Us’ at the top of the page. To learn more about inQUEST consulting, go to www.inQUESTconsulting.com.