Welcome to Grace After Fire

Grace After Fire provides support for and helps women veterans of the United States military who are returning from active duty so that they can re-engage as mothers, wives and daughters in civilian life.

The Woman’s Heart began operating in 2002, attracting hundreds of women in search of crisis support services. A significant data point was the frequency of women military veterans disclosing their chronic use of alcohol and drugs as a means of coping or self-medicating their symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and military sexual assault. The online crisis ratio trends show 8 out of 10 women veterans are in crisis at the time of contact.

This brought about a great initiative, Grace After Fire (“Grace”). Grace is designed to serve women veterans from all eras and branches of military service (currently 1.8 million), and is preparing to meet the high numbers of women (approximately 14 percent of the armed services) currently serving. Although women veterans represent less than 6 percent of veterans accessing VA healthcare, 71 percent of the women who do use the VA System have a mental health concern. Unfortunately, a challenge that can occur in offering VA services to women is providing accessible gender-responsive and trauma-informed care at all locations.

Grace is a virtual organization reaching across the nation, and is already engaging with women veterans still in theater as they prepare to come home. Grace’s Board of Directors is comprised of 80 percent veterans, managed by women veterans; and our Clinical Advisory Committee is comprised of 100 percent women trauma experts, researchers, and addiction specialists.

Grace in the News

SAVE THE DATE - March 3, 2012

Monday, 23 January 2012 06:57

First Annual Grace After Fire Women Veterans Summit

Discover Your Grace: The Power of Women Veterans

Experts will lead focused sessions on issues of importance to Texas women Veterans from every branch of service, all designed to facilitate successful transition from battlefield to families, workforce, and communities. Sessions will include small group discussion with experts in health and wellness, family resilience, gender-specific medicine, fashion, entering the workforce opportunities, the latest in brain research on post-combat challenges, avenues to access for care, and peer-to-peer model focused on women.

Caregiver Support

Thursday, 01 December 2011 12:51

The Department of Veterans Affairs is implementing a telephone support program to help the spouses of returning Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans, after a pilot support program showed a significant reduction in stress for spouses. Returning to civilian life after living in constant combat readiness can be a shocking transition, and it is the immediate family, the spouses and children, who bear that br...unt of the transition with those who served.

The spouse telephone support program, which is part of the VA's Caregiver Support Program, builds spouses' ability to cope with the challenges that reintegration to civilian society can bring, helps them serve as a pillar of support for returning veterans, and eases the transition for families after deployments. Spouses in the pilot program reported decreased symptoms of depression and anxiety, with an increase in social support.

Spouses participated in 12 telephone support groups over six months. The focus is on problem solving and communications, relationships, mental health and resilience. A trained, nationwide team of VA medical center staff members, including many caregiver support coordinators, will lead the support groups.

Typical issues spouses and veterans face after deployment include communication difficulties, the need to renegotiate family roles and responsibilities and the added stress of combat related injury. Spouses of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have reported feeling overwhelmed, depressed, anxious and frustrated.

The program is based on research by the Memphis VA Medical Center and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. Researchers developed and studied interventions for family members of veterans and military personnel. Their work with spouses of post deployed and deployed military personnel is funded through the Defense Health Program, managed by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command.

Providing support to family caregivers is the right thing for the VA to do. A simple series of phone calls can do so much good. Certainly those who fought for our nation and the spouses who allowed them to make the sacrifice deserve this support. The more support we can provide to the family, the better the outcome will be for our veterans.

The VA has a Web page, www.caregiver.va.gov, with general information on spouse telephone support and other caregiver support programs available through the VA and the community. For additional information contact your state and local veterans representatives. In our area contact Robin Greer at 817-573-4282 or Lee Downs at 940-325-2998.