Yes, I am. Thank you.
Good afternoon. I'll be talking to you more about the vocational rehabilitation and employment program. The mission of our program is to provide the services needed to help service members and veterans with service-connected disabilities return to the workforce, or, if unable to return to the workforce, to help them become as independent as possible in their daily activities.
We provide this service through masters-level rehabilitation counsellors and employment coordinators who work in our field offices.
We have 57 regional offices and over 100 outbased offices, so that we have professional counsellors and employment coordinators in the communities where the veterans live.
I would like to go over four programs of services that our program administers, and then I'll go into more detail on one of them. The first of the four programs we administer is the chapter 31 program, which is vocational rehabilitation for individuals with service-connected disabilities. We also have a chapter 35 program, which is educational counselling for children and widows or spouses of veterans who have a permanent and total service-connected disability. We also have a chapter 36 program that we administer, which is educational and vocational counselling services for service members who are transitioning out of the military and for veterans who are eligible for an educational program. Then there is a chapter 18 program, which is vocational training and rehabilitation for children with spina bifida born to certain veterans who served in Vietnam or Korea.
I'm going to focus on what we call the chapter 31 program, which is the vocational rehabilitation employment program for veterans with disabilities and service members with disabilities.
First I'd like to talk about our coming home support program, which is our outreach program. There are multiple ways in which we perform outreach to ensure that our service members and veterans are aware of our program. We have a presence at medical hold facilities.
We are, as Ms. Flohr informed you earlier, going to be at the IDES locations, so we can be performing evaluations for group rehabilitation at the same time that the service members are going through their medical evaluation.
We also have OEF/OIF coordinators, who expedite services for the service members who are severely injured and exiting out of the military.
We also have a VetSuccess on campus program, which helps us talk about...[Technical difficulty—Editor]...positions of rehab counsellor at currently eight universities and colleges. They provide support to all veteran students who happen to be at those colleges, regardless of their eligibility for any VA benefits.