Veronica Ashford, Career Skills Program counselor at Fort Campbell, KY,, talks to Sgt. William Slade and Sgt. Ibrahim Kargbo, both assigned to 550th Engineer Detachment, 887th Engineer Support Company, 326th Engineer Battalion, 101st Division Sustainment Brigade, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), about career programs this spring, as part of the Transition Assistance Program. Photo by Stephanie Ingersoll, Fort Campbell public affairs
WASHINGTON — Transitioning from active duty military service to civilian life is difficult at the best of times. The pandemic added a host of new challenges, highlighted existing problems with the transitioning process, and widened the cracks through which those veterans who are most in need of support are in danger of falling.
The Transition Assistance Program (TAP)—which essentially is a series of classes that begin up to one year before separation from the military—is supposed to provide servicemembers with information on signing up for VA benefits and receiving healthcare, as well as avenues to education, employment and other critical needs. The TAP process has long been criticized, however, for the avalanche of information it loads onto servicemembers who are already overwhelmed with planning for post-military life. Consequently, many servicemembers see TAP as something they need to get through in order to get out, rather than as a helpful resource.
Vivian Richards, program manager of the Minority Veterans of America association, testified to the House VA Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity last month that TAP is failing at its mission and that the pandemic only made that failure more apparent. Richards transitioned out of a 20-year Army career last summer. During her last few months in the military, she was diagnosed with a conversion disorder that left her “physically crippled and in mental shambles.”
“I left with 90 days of prescription medications and a box of my personal belongings,” Richards told legislators. “I didn’t need the pomp and circumstance of retirement celebration. I don’t think most people would say they need it. What we needed was substantive and nuanced support during the final period of our military careers. That never came.”
After two decades in the military, transition came as a great deflation, Richards declared, and the TAP program did little to assist her.
“We must stop perpetuating a broken system designed to check a box and not take into account our community’s unique needs,” she said.
A Veterans of Foreign Wars survey of transitioning servicemembers conducted from March 2020 to February 2021 found that, while there are slight increases in servicemembers taking part in TAP, many are obviously not opting for the program. Of those surveyed, 40% said they were not attending TAP classes at least six months prior to separation, and 60% were not participating in any of the specific tracks that were made mandatory with the program beginning last year. The veterans’ service organization also found that the program did not have an easy time transitioning to distanced learning during the pandemic.
“In March 2020, TAP offices were shutting down and furloughing VA benefits advisers who were contract employees,” Patrick Murray, VFW’s national legislative director, told the subcommittee. “This left transitioning servicemembers scrambling to adapt to what was not only a national crisis and changing environment, but [doing it] in the midst of transitioning from the military.”
According to Murray, once servicemembers were directed to computer-based training, they found it to be little more than a box-checking exercise. This included 330 minutes of noninteractive computer training for employment fundamentals of transition, as well as 240 minutes for VA benefits and services.
“There was no interaction. It was all automated,” Murray said. “VFW believes that any online TAP training going forward should always be in a live format. And in-person should be the standard. And all TAP resources should always be on a public-facing website, not behind a firewall requiring DoD credentials to access.”
As of mid-May, about 83% of DoD installations were open, and TAP programs were transitioning back from virtual to in-person training.
Asked by the subcommittee how DoD is making sure that every servicemember is taking part in TAP, William Mansell, DoD’s director of Defense support services explained that, when a servicemember is ready to transition or puts in their retirement request, it triggers a communication from DoD to the servicemember about TAP.
“That is working reasonably well, I believe,” he said.
Mansell admitted, however, that what happens to a servicemember after he or she leaves the military remains a blind spot for the department.
“We have a lot of information on the period of time leading up to when a person actually transitions. But what we don’t have today is what happened to that servicemember after they transition,” Mansell said. “We can’t really tell how well we did.”
Lack of data plays an especially vital role in the transition experience of LGBTQ veterans, explained Jennifer Dane, executive director of the Modern Military Association of America.
These veterans are being deeply underserved, she said, and that starts with not being counted.
“The pandemic served as a catalyst for those individuals, because they were predisposed to increased hardships [including PTSD and MST],” Dane explained. “In 2020, the GAO highlighted the fact that we need to study these health outcomes, and TAPS could be a big part of understanding this community.”
Yet, the lingering impact of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the very recently lifted transgender military ban has left DoD with a lack of data on who in the service is LGBTQ and made it less likely that those servicemembers would self-identify.
“We’ve got to go back to the basics. We have to know who we’re serving,” Dane told legislators. “Because the lack of knowledge of accessing the LGBTQ servicemembers that are transitioning creates a disparity that perpetuates. Because we don’t know the servicemembers who are coming into the military who are LGBTQ, this really impacts how we’re serving them in the military, how we’re serving them in TAPS, how we’re serving them in the VHA, how we’re serving them in VBA, and then when they go out to other communities, we can’t access what their needs are.”
