10 August 2023 - Vancouver - Veterans Affairs Canada
Five organizations in the greater Vancouver area will receive a combined $1.45 million in support from Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) to support mental health and wellness projects for Veterans and their families.
The Honourable Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence and Randeep Sarai, Member of Parliament for Surrey Centre, announced the funding today through VAC's Veteran and Family Well-being Fund (VFWF). This is part of VAC's commitment, outlined in the Minister's Mandate Letter, to ensure that Veterans and their families have access to adequate mental health resources, services and training programs tailored to their specific needs.
These five important initiatives are:
Moving Forward Family Services will receive $200,000 for their Veteran Wellness and Community Support Program. This project will offer counselling for Veterans with mental health problems, isolation, and everyday challenges integrating back to life after service, using a model of over 200 supervised interns to support those otherwise unable to afford or qualify for counselling.
Legion Veterans Village will receive $500,000 towards a personalized therapeutic program for Veterans at their integrated centre of excellence. This project will use multi-disciplinary services to accelerate effects of multi-modal therapeutics on symptoms of brain fog and long COVID.
The Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention Centre of British Columbia will receive $60,000 for their Crisis Care Continuum for Veterans project, which will provide suicide prevention training to community members and organizations that work with Veterans. Veterans will also have access to 24/7 crisis services and community education.
The Veterans Transition Network will receive $200,000 for a project that will train Veterans to provide high-level peer support and para-professional counselling to support mental health, social integration and self-care for other Veterans.
Wounded Warriors Canada will receive $500,000 for their Couples Overcoming PTSD Everyday (COPE) project, which will provide Veterans suffering from PTSD with five-day counselling, psycho-education, structured reflection, life review method, group discussion facilitated by two clinicians (life experience peer couple), and six months of life coaching.
The VFWF was launched by VAC in 2018. It provides grants and contributions to conduct research and implement initiatives and projects that support the well-being of Veterans and their families. Between 2018 and 2023, the VFWF has awarded $42.6M in funding to 77 organizations, for 123 initiatives.
