Welcome to my blog
My name is Joseph Scott McCarthy. I am the author of a new book, Checks for Vets, a Guidebook to Help Wartime Service Veterans and their Surviving Spouses Receive VA Pensions to Pay for Long-Term Care. For more than eight years, I have helped veterans and surviving spouses learn about this pension through speaking engagements, newspaper articles, and personally assisting veterans and their surviving spouses moving-in to assisted living communities and utilizing nonmedical home care. It took more than four years of research and editing revisions to develop the book. It is an all-in-one book that allows the reader to get their hands around the complicated process of locating documents and completing forms to file a claim for an Aid and Attendance pension or Housebound pension. I am still amazed to learn in my everyday dealings with veterans that they are unaware this program exists.
My goal in writing Checks for Vets was to:
- Get the word out to wartime service veterans and their surviving spouses that there is pension money available for them in their retirement years to help them with activities of daily living (bathing, dressing, etc).
- Provide an all-in-one resource book for filing a claim for an Aid and Attendance pension or Housebound pension to eliminate the need to search multiple locations for information.
- Save veterans time, and thus money, in speeding up the filing process by explaining the often complicated forms needed to file a claim.
- Help the veteran service officers (VSOs) review more claims by educating wartime service vets and their surviving spouses on how to submit error-free pension applications to the VSOs.
- Encourage people to become veteran advocates and use Checks for Vets to inform others about veteran pension benefits.
The goal of the blog is to:
- Provide a forum to discuss newsworthy articles on Aid and Attendance and Housebound pensions.
- Update VA pension information when it becomes available to complement the Checks for Vets resource book.
- Offer an opportunity for veterans, their surviving spouses, and their family members to share success stories and comments on how VA pensions have changed their lives for the better and allowed a dignified retirement experience.
Recognize veterans every day you see them and thank them for their service. Ask them if they know about the pension they earned possibly decades ago that can change their lives if they need long-term care. This is a critically important time of their lives when many are disabled, often alone, and too proud to ask for financial help.
Joseph S. McCarthy