Representation
The VBA is designed to be an administrative service to veterans. In theory, any veteran can complete application forms for benefits and proceed on their own to secure all they have earned by their honorable service. The reality is that approaching the VBA is often complex and any misstep along the way can throw a simple application off track and cause months or years of delays.Veterans are usually encouraged to choose a representative from a group that may be called a National Service Organization or a Veterans Service Organization. These groups provide affiliated "service officers" to veterans at no charge.
The National or Veterans Service Officer is charged with the responsibility of assisting the veteran to determine what they may file for, completing and submitting all appropriate paperwork and forms and advising the veteran of how the process may work in their case.
Each state also provides a network of Veterans Service Officers that are generally found at the county levels of government. The County Veterans Service Officer (CVSO) has similar responsibilities to the National Service Officer and may have access to many other state or local services to help veterans in need. The CVSO is sometimes required to partner with the NSO to represent the veteran to VBA. This sometimes results in confusion for the veteran who may not fully understand who is his point of contact.
Not all Veterans Service Officers are equally qualified.
While there is a required level of certification to become a service officer and to represent veterans to the VBA, it's been called a "rubber stamp" process. Many organizations provide well meaning volunteers who are promised training that never comes. There are no national standards for a VSO to hold to and no required continuing education programs.
Veterans are not allowed to retain lawyers to advocate their cause at the first steps or beginning of the process. If an attorney represents a veteran in the first level of the process, it must be as a pro bono or no fee arrangement. Only when a veteran has been denied a benefit may he decide to file a Notice of Disagreement and seek an attorney's advice.
The sources of representation and information available on today's Internet vary as wildly as the Internet itself. Chat rooms, message threads, videos of self proclaimed experts opining their particular bias and even sites that charge for information that is available for free abound. Most of the message threads have users who claim to be veterans and who use glorified "handles" or nicknames only. The more experienced advisors take on ever more serious names or symbols of their longevity on a particular site and their word is lent that much more weight.
Some of the advice is very good and offered with a lot of thought. Other directives are badly misspelled, full of factual errors and at best are worthless and at worst may be dangerous and cause a veteran a great deal of trouble with the VBA. Think before you act on advice from someone who won't show you their picture along with their name and locale as well as why they are qualified to advise you.
Let the buyer beware is probably the best advice when choosing your representative.
I'm an advocate of the Do It Yourself (DIY) method and I believe that at the initial stage of applying for a VA disability compensation benefit a capable veteran is likely to see a better outcome if he or she is in control of their own claim.
To my mind, a VSO is an intermediary who stands between the veteran and the VBA and often has no particular authority, education or experience to influence the process. At its most basic, using a VSO only means that the veteran completes the required paperwork, hands it off to the VSO who in turn hands it over to the VBA. During that simple step the VSO may or may not offer some advice as to what the veteran should claim as a potential disability. Often the VSO simply records what the veteran says and that ends the transaction.
I see little reason to follow that path. If the veteran has poor reading or comprehension skills or can't use a computer to download and print the required forms, the use of a VSO is required. Any veteran who may be homebound, bedridden or otherwise institutionalized may need the services of a VSO.
The majority of initial applications are reasonably straightforward, not complex and only require that the veteran carefully follow the well established and published rules of the process.
For more on this topic, click here.
Another article on choosing a representative is here.
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