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We were married and right away within two weeks Paul got shipped off to Iraq
and I had a child who is now one and a half. I had Austin, our little boy while Paul was in Iraq
He came back and we had another baby, right away.
After your husband comes back from Iraq, your whole life is changed.
That is Ashley when she was born.
Since the beginning of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq,
more than 1600 men and women have been deployed from the state of New Hampshire, many for their second and third time.
What impact does this have not only on our soldiers, but also on their families and their communities?
Working with the Department of Defense, Joint Forces and the New Hampshire National Guard,
Easter Seals has been identifying and solving the challenges facing our military families today.
Like many of our initiatives, we begin with a very good discovery phase,
and we spent a good twelve months understanding what the problems were facing the service men and women in our community
and again, we came to understand this was a much bigger problem than just
helping a few people get over a few hurdles during deployment.
(Background female voice) They come back with Post Traumatic Stress. They come back a different person than when they left.
When I came back, Boom.
She is no longer just in charge. She has to work with somebody and she is used to doing it on her own,
so its kind of hard at first to readjust to each other.
Its hard to hold a job, a civilian job.
Its hard to just get right back into civilian life.
We've done a great job with pre-deployment and we've done a great job with support during deployment,
what we're hoping to attend to during this post deployment period is really helping families re-unite,
and gain those relationships and reintroduce themselves because lots a changed in 12 months.
(male) You certainly have a lot less patience with people and stuff like that. (female): Absolutely
And its not something you want to do. Its just automatic.
because you just don't feel like that understood or understand what's going on.
We think this experience really takes close to 15 to 20 months of full reintegration
I mean, when you think about it, it took them 12 months to prepare to be a warrior
They're away for 12 months behaving like a warrior.
Surely we can give them 15 months to reintegrate back into our society.
When our soldiers come home, they need to be able to talk about what they saw and did while oversees.
Easter Seals provides a trained counselor, who knows the soldier and their family,
and helps them reconnect with their family, their job and their community.
I needed the most help with trying to get my family back to the way it was.
but too to aleviate more stress, with him, I think you were out of work,
I needed help with getting the grocery bill paid with six people in the house.
The work with our families is very rewarding.
Our care coordinators are working one on one with every family member,
and the family as a whole, not just the service member, and no two families are alike as you can imagine.
Some times you have your down days and then your ups days just dealing with everything,
and then to hear from a person that is caring is a great feeling,
Its a support system, that you need.
Sometimes you don't even think you need it, but then when you hear her voice, you think, "Oh, thank God she is calling."
Taking what Easter Seals learned in that first year, they not only work with individual soldiers and their families,
but entire military units, well before they are deployed.
We're able to take and put into place all that we learned in that first discovery phase,
actually engage them in predeployment readiness that involves avoiding these catastrophes right from the beginning.
and that way when they can come home they can concentrate on that true reintegration with family,
and not be worried about the plight of unemployment for a returning guard member,
or their mounting bills that may have occurred during their departure,
because we were able to help them get some of those logistical issues under control.
This is not a group that one, likes to ask for help,
and two if you start to put barriers in place or hurdles to jump through,
you'll really minimize the extent to which they'll ask for help.
What we want to do is have readily available resources,
so that small problems can be fixed, and they can be fixed in a timely way without a lot of red tape.
Generating the much needed resources to provide for flexible spending is extremely important
Easter Seals has built a framework to connect those people who want to help with those people who need the help.
Easter Seals is a great asset to military families and the military community.
There is still help out there and I think that is a really big thing to understand,
that its okay. You are not alone.
There are people out there to help you.
There are people out there to help you and you are going to get through it.
and we did, and we are.