Everyone's case happens to be different, unfortunately.
For continuity of care, I think it's a good interaction for the member who's injured to maintain communiqué with his case representative or his caseworker, making sure that this contact is also in communiqué with the unit or units that are involved with ensuring that all the t's are crossed and i's are dotted.
I think if there is anything that should be improved, I would say that there should be a team, because my case manager couldn't always be there. The guy who was appointed to stick with us couldn't always be there, and at times we did feel we were left in the dark.
When I was injured initially my home was down in Cambridge, so my unit, being out of Petawawa, is quite the distance. It's a six-hour drive to be able to get in close to your unit, to be with and among all those resources that were available. I think, especially with our reserves, our part-time service members, if they had an opportunity for someone to be posted or someone to come out to that site and stay with them for, I would say, a period of six months, through their recovery, I think that would be ideal.
Yes, case managers help you with some of your administrative duties or burdens, but there's no one there really to support you with whatever else is going on outside that picture. For example, at the time, Heather's mom, Heather, and I were living together. Our case manager would come or call us once in a while but wasn't always there to answer questions, nor did she have the insight or the knowledge to answer all the questions that we had. Even though we had asked her stuff that pertained to the military, she didn't know the answer, and it was a huge delay.
If we had someone from the unit or from the battle group who had that awareness, who was easily able to answer those questions for us, I think that would be ideal. It could be a peer, it could be someone...but an opportunity for a position to be filled should that unfortunate circumstance arise.