Veterans Affairs officials on Thursday announced they will suspend all annual reassessments for the Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers amid changes to the program. (Army photo).
Veterans Affairs officials will suspend all annual reassessments of families in their caregiver stipend program, citing continued work into revising rules and policies associated with the benefit.
The move comes after months of controversy over the Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers, which provides monthly financial support to about 33,000 veterans in need of full-time at-home care.
VA officials also repeated their promise not to discharge or reduce stipends for any families based on earlier reassessments.
Currently the program is open only to veterans who served after 2001 or before 1976, but it is scheduled to expand it to all veterans this fall. In preparation for that, officials last year began a review of all existing post-9/11 veteran participants to ensure they still qualified for the stipend under amended rules.
In March, in response to complaints from families about the process, VA leadership acknowledged that roughly 90% of families who underwent the reviews were scheduled to be booted from the program based on decisions by administrators. That would have dropped almost half of all current families from the program.
VA Secretary Denis McDonough responded by suspending plans to remove any families from the program and promising to develop new eligibility criteria that is more flexible and less punitive for families.
The stipends — awarded to veterans with service-connected injuries that limit their ability to live independently — vary based on where veterans live, but generally hover around $3,000 a month for the most severely wounded individuals and $1,800 for others in need of around-the-clock care.
Advocates have said that losing the stipend could force infirm veterans and their families into financial distress, since many spouses and parents cannot work full-time and care for their loved ones.
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Author: Military Times
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