If I may, “continuum of care” is a term that's used in the medical profession. It's critical, from inception to completion, to make sure that continuum of care happens. All of these programs you mentioned, and we've spent $84 million on these, that's great because at the initial contact, wow, here's a person who leaves with the feeling that “There are some things in place that I might be able to access, and I might not be in this place again.” Then the next piece comes in. “Okay, let's look at your account. Have you filled out this form? Have you filled out that form? No, sir, we didn't find your advocate's consent notice”, even though, in fact, it was in place, and all those things.
As Mr. Bruyea alluded, the programs don't recognize that the person on the receiving end of that continuum of care might not be articulate and might not understand how the systems work. The mark of any great organization, especially the military, is the leadership. The leadership has to say, “We recognize that we're dealing with multicultural issues, educational issues.” A lot of people join the military because life isn't so good in the family. They go in and they get trained in a trade. They come out without a good academic education, and they're thrust out there with “here's a whole pile of money”. They spend it all but they haven't addressed all their problems so they end up coming back. It's very cyclical.
Again, I can tell you from my own experience as a service officer that, indeed, some of the programs have in some of those cases saved lives. However, in other cases, as I've mentioned, people didn't make it. They're no longer with us and their families are left behind to bear the burden of asking themselves, “What could we have done differently?“
I would like to say to everybody in this committee, if you believe that women are not second-class citizens in this system, especially female veterans, do something about it. Don't just talk at committee. Go out there and say, “We are not going to accept our government telling us to continue to put nice platitudes out there, but not to do things to deliver these veterans from the battles they face at home.”