Recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have increased the number of veterans with disabilities in the U.S., including many who have survived serious injuries due to medical and technological advances not available in previous wars. Like most people with disabilities, newly disabled veterans want to find a job, continue their education, raise a family or otherwise get on with living their lives. Also like many other people with disabilities, newly disabled veterans are faced with maneuvering the myriad of programs and services available to them to restart their lives and support their employment and educational goals, but many give up along the way or miss opportunities as a result of this complex maze of bureaucracies.

To support both individual veterans and service providers to facilitate veterans’ smooth transition back to work and manage and maximize the programs, benefits, services and opportunities afforded veterans with disabilities, WID is building understandable, comprehensive, and interactive online tools so that veterans can take better control of their own benefits planning process. Specifically, WID and its veterans’ service organization partners are building two online tools: an online Veterans’ Benefits Information Navigator, which will provide users with an individualized summary of benefits, health care and employment programs most relevant to their situation based on their responses to a short survey, and a veterans’ Benefits and Work Calculator, which will allow veterans who are receiving disability compensation and other benefits to get credible and individualized estimates of how working could affect veterans’ and related benefits.

In addition to developing online tools, the project will recruit a Veterans Advisory Work Group, incorporating representatives from veteran service organizations, government agencies, and veteran consumers of services from a variety of military backgrounds to provide expertise and end-user perspectives. WID is now recruiting for a Veterans Project Manager, please see Open Positions on this website.

Planning for the project started in 2008 when WID convened a panel of experts to begin the research needed to design these tools. Panel members brought years of experience in the fields of veterans’ benefits, counseling, and online technology and collated input from a wide range of veterans’ benefits organizations and experts. The experts’ panel defined the scope of the online tools and their location on a nonprofit organization website; created an internal system for organizing the vast amounts of information necessary to create the tools; organized the details on the programs of interest; and in January 2010 published the Veterans’ Benefits Online Tools Boundaries Report, proposing the content and other parameters for the design, production and testing of the online tools in next phase to begin in 2010.

VB101 is based on the success of WID’s Disability Benefits 101 Information Services, which provides web-based services on public and private health and benefit programs for workers and job seekers (www.db101.org), conducts statewide outreach, training and presentations on health, benefits, work and disability in several states and at national conferences, and works with disability community stakeholders to improve consumer-directed health care coverage and employment services. Thousands of people each year have used California’s DB101 Benefits Planning Calculators with an average completion rate of 63 percent. As a result of DB101’s success in California, Michigan, Minnesota and New Jersey have chosen to adapt California’s model to meet their state’s needs and have begun implementing DB101 Information Services in their states.