In this podcast of an IowaWatch Connection program that aired on radio stations Aug. 11-13 -- before veterans day at the 2017 Iowa State Fair in Des Moines -- we hear from those whose jobs are to help veterans and tell their stories.
Iowa’s homeless veterans are missing services available to help them because many do not know about the services, which include financial and housing assistance. Others simply choose not to use them.
Far fewer veterans are facing long waits for disability compensation after the Department of Veterans Affairs spent the past six months focusing on the backlog, including mandating case worker overtime
The federal government has yet to document how many students on the Post-9/11 GI Bill have graduated, or even if they stayed in school. Tom Harkin's Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions questions whether or not veterans attending for-profit schools were benefiting from the educa
Veterans are killing themselves at more than double the rate of the civilian population with about 49,000 taking their own lives between 2005 and 2011, a News21 reveals. Veterans committed one of every five suicides in Iowa in 2005 through 2011.
Some regional offices paid bonuses to VA workers while veterans waited for claims to be processed. At least costly efforts to go paperless have improved wait times. Your portal to these stories, plus several more in this special report from the News21 project, is here.
The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense spent at least $1.3 billion during the last four years trying unsuccessfully to develop a single electronic health-records
The Department of Veterans Affairs gave workers millions of dollars in bonuses for “excellent” performances that effectively encouraged them to avoid claims that needed extra work to document veterans’ injuries, a News21 investigation found.
Veterans who survived Taliban and al Qaida attacks, roadside bombs, mortar fire and the deaths of fellow soldiers told reporters from the News21 project they have returned home to a future threatened by poverty, unemployment, homelessness and suicide.
The Post 9/11 G.I. Bill promises a college education, paid in full, for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Getting that promise fulfilled however, is difficult for some Iowa veterans whose payments arrive as many as two months later than expected, leaving them struggling to pay for housin
WMT radio’s Bob Bruce featured the investigative story by IowaWatch and four Iowa newspapers about waiting times facing the state’s war veterans who try to get U.S.
The numbers were available: Iowa veterans were waiting at the end of 2012, on average, 313 days before the Department of Veterans Affairs processed their benefit claims. Less than a year, but more than 10 months. After returning from war, with disabilities. But what did those numbers mean?
