I wrote this as an email to a friend but thought I should post it here. It outlines pretty much where I’m at and what the next/current steps are.

I starting to see that the case worker I have might be pretty good at his job!
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I’ve been working with this caseworker as you know. He has told me to go ahead and apply to the residential program in Temple. That requires my psych filling out the paperwork and submitting it for me. My psych has said “no problem”, he thinks I should take advantage of the program as well if I can. So I’m waiting on this. I’ll follow up again with him end of this week.

I don’t *know* if I will qualify or not as the VA has so many different definitions/levels of “veteran”, another 4-6 weeks probably before I know if I would qualify unreservedly. But… I think the case worker is trying to maneuver many individual pieces so that he can play them off of each other.

If I qualify for the residential program and I’m “just waiting” on the claim to finish processing but the group is starting now, then maybe they’ll go ahead and let me start. Then my presence in the residential program can be used as an additional data fact to support my VA claim.

Again, if I’m accepted into the residential program but I need “suitable living arrangements” then he can take that data to the various housing groups around town and show all the needed qualities to succeed and fast track me in their programs.

But, while we don’t know for certain yet, my case worker thinks that if I’m able to say “yes, I have a friend(s) that I’m staying with until I can find a place of my own” on my residential application that they will accept that as a working answer. They may require more by the time I leave the program, they may not, we don’t know. But then again.. if I get accepted into the program.. see previous paragraph.

Right now is another “wait and see” stage.