The State of the American Veteran: The Los Angeles County Veterans Study
Summary: The United States has been at war for more than a decade, with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan representing the longest in our nation’s history. This post-9/11 veteran population has been making its way back to civilian communities. California is home to over 1.8 million former service members, making it the largest veteran population of any state in the United States, and Los Angeles County is the most populous. Each year, approximately 12,000 military veterans will settle in Los Angeles County as they transition out of the military, joining the 325,000 veterans who currently reside here. For the most part, veterans in California and Los Angeles County reflect the larger national demographics, with the exception that the local population has more Hispanic and Asian veterans than the national average. Notwithstanding these minor demographic differences, the data from this study will be applicable to local communities, states and national agencies developing strategies to assist veterans transitioning home. The timing of this study could not be more critical. The Los Angeles County Veterans Study, conducted by the USC School of Social Work Center for Innovation and Research on Veterans & Military Families, is an effort to provide data-driven recommendations for serving the large population of veterans residing is Los Angeles County. This study found a number of veterans have and are continuing to transition well into their civilian population. This report, however, focuses on those who are facing challenges so that targeted programs and policies can ensure that all veterans are successful, not just a lucky few. Service members encounter a series of needs as they transition out of the military. These include securing employment and housing, addressing physical or mental health issues and adjusting to civilian culture. The ease through which this transition is made has a profound impact on post-service well-being. In an effort to examine how Los Angeles County veterans have managed this transition as well as the current state of their overall needs, the Los Angeles County Veterans Study surveyed 1,300 veterans living in Los Angeles County. In addition focused group interviews were conducted to supplement the findings from the survey. From this effort, the following findings and specific recommendations were developed.
Abstract: One of the key achievements of Forces in Mind Trust’s (FiMT) Our Community - Our Covenant series of reports, beginning in 2016, has been to establish a toolkit for local authorities to help them develop support for their local Armed Forces Community (AFC). The 2016 report launched the idea of a “core infrastructure”, supported by self-assessment questions and some wider tips. Formal research and informal engagement show that the toolkit still provides an important contribution to successful local delivery of Covenant pledges and wider AFC support. It’s a baseline in the face of ever-present funding stresses and a point of reference when there are changes in member and officer responsibilities. This means it is important that the toolkit remains up to date. It was last reviewed in 2022 and presented as an Annex to FiMT’s research report A Decade of the Covenant. Since then, there has been further research into local support for the Armed Forces Community for the next iteration of the Our Community - Our Covenant series. This updated toolkit reflects these recent findings about local practice as well as developments following the introduction in the Armed Forces Act 2021 of the duty of due regard to the principles of the Covenant in the focus areas of housing, education and healthcare. As with the original document, the toolkit remains targeted at local authorities. It covers their own direct role in supporting the local AFC, but also the crucial activity of convening local partnerships and so enabling effective local collaborative action. The key changes to the core infrastructure and self-assessment cover: (1) More emphasis on embedding AFC support into the mainstream of local authority work. (2) An extended top tips section with more advice based on recent research. (3) We have dropped the descriptive scenarios of challenges that members of the AFC face. These have now been overtaken by analytical scenarios included in the freely available national training material and in the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) Covenant Legal Duty toolkit, which helps to explain the legal duty aspect of the Covenant. (4) Some additional material about the individual roles, collaboration, communication and vision and commitment elements of the core infrastructure. This toolkit update is being made in spring 2025 at a time when further change in the Covenant environment is likely, with potential extension of the Covenant duty and expected re-organisation in English local government and creation of new combined or strategic authorities. Additional modules could be added to the toolkit to reflect these ongoing policy developments.