Military update: Catastrophically wounded gain lifelong advocates

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Military update: Catastrophically wounded gain lifelong advocates
By Tom Philpott
Pacific edition, Thursday, October 2, 2008

About 120 service members and veterans who have suffered traumatic combat wounds requiring lifelong care have begun to see the benefits of having a Federal Recovery Coordinator assign to help them.

These “FRCs” are still few in number. For the catastrophically wounded of current wars, they coordinate their care, their rehabilitation and their reintegration into society even if that difficult process lasts a lifetime.

Sarah Wade, wife of retired Army Sgt. Ted Wade who lost an arm and suffered traumatic brain injury in combat four years ago, said their FRC is making a difference by removing the bureaucratic hassles they have faced.

“One of the nice things is everything is their jurisdiction,” said Sarah about the FRC program. Often since Ted was wounded, issues had popped up related to his condition, or to the challenges the Wades faced as a family, and Sarah or Ted didn’t know who to contact.

“We had so many different people that a lot of time I didn’t know who to go to for what, or sometimes there would be gaps where pretty much what I was hearing across the board was ‘That’s not in my jurisdiction.’ ”


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=57856