For veterans, coming off engaged duty can lead to a type of tank impact.
Chris Shea, a , North Haven , fire and retired , Navy , former, knows how it feels.
Your money arrives on the first and fifteenth of every month unless the state shuts down. You are given directions to where you are going, what to do, when to arrive, and why,” he said. You have freedom and liberty in the human world, but it also means you also have freedom and liberty to run round in circles.
Shea, who enlisted in the military in 1991 and remained as a military until his retirement this January, said that for many in the defense, there is a shared sense of purpose. He said it can be challenging to find a job where there is no guarantee that former applicants will get a position with a comparable sense of purpose.
Many people promise to leave and conquer the world, but he said they end up in a desk without realizing what they are signing up for.
He is presently utilizing his nonprofit, Hero to Hero, to build a network that links first officer positions in officers, fire, and emergency health services. While serving in the Pentagon while completing his online education with Charter Oak State College, he created the system for it as a culmination project. He manages it when he’s not on- duty with , North Have n ‘s , Fire Department.
A key component of that work is the , U. S. Department of Defense ‘s , SkillBridge plan, which offers employment education, internships and jobs to veterans. Shea said he saw a benefit from working with provincial first responder courses to advance and support veterans who seek to use the skills they acquired while serving in these capacities.
” It seemed like it was an underrepresented area”, he said.
A lot of the available plans for veterans, he said, tended to prioritize items like solar panels or investments, such as plumbing and electrical.
” I think there’s some resemblance in officers and fire and also EMS and the defense”, he said. ” It’s the services- oriented area, the togetherness, having guys hanging out waiting for an incident to occur and the alarm goes out and there’s a common sense of purpose and objective. It’s a biological match for those who leave the service, in my opinion.
According to data provided by the state , Department of Labor, 791 soldiers were served by the agency’s former programs since , April 2023. The unemployment rate for veterans is 3.5 %, which is lower than the state average of 3.7 %, according to research economists at CTDOL.
CTDOL study economists report that 17.9 percentage of the country’s 62, 942 veterans in the state’s labor work in manufacturing jobs, a field that comprises 10.6 percentage of the country’s total jobs, according to the most recent people survey. Education and health, the country’s largest employment sector with 26.2 percentage of the country’s 1.84 million work, is the next- largest employment sector for soldiers, with 15.9 percent of the former workplace included in health and education jobs.
Although public administration jobs, which include the type of first responder jobs highlighted by Hero to Hero, comprise 4.1 percent of the state’s jobs, 11.2 percent of , Connecticut ‘s , working veterans are employed in that sector. According to DOL statistics, it’s the fourth- largest employment sector for veterans in , Connecticut, although the top three sectors — manufacturing, education and health, and professional and business services — all offer more than twice as many jobs.
Ron Catania, a veterans outreach worker with the , Connecticut Department of Labor, said his office works with veterans at all levels, connecting them with resources. He claimed that his office can direct veterans to the right place even if the services they require do not fall under the DOL’s purview.
” We’re taking a veteran from the beginning, when they return from service, as well as any other veteran that would come in for services and putting a plan together for their career”, he said.
Meeting the needs is not always straightforward, he said, as veterans may be at different places in their lives. He claimed that his office is ready to work with any veteran who wants to apply for a job.
” It’s a difficult process, especially for a veteran coming out of the service who is trying to steer them in the right direction,” he said.
Catania said his own sense of purpose in his role is largely motivated by his own experience as an , Air Force , veteran who was deployed to , Vietnam , during the Vietnam War. In 1969, he claimed, there was less collaboration between government agencies to prevent veterans from falling through the cracks.
” We were misled about our course of action. We had to make up our own plan”, he said. ” We did n’t have programs to help us with a resume, we did n’t have programs to help us do a job search. We had a situation of basically being hopeless”.
Catania claimed that returning to his home country helped him get a better education, but not everyone else had such a positive experience.
” Things are so much better now, but veterans have to be in it to win it”, he said. We wo n’t leave any veteran in a situation where we can assist them, just like it’s not like not leaving a man behind.
The Hero to Hero initiative, according to Catania, is a wise move because it provides qualified workers with transferrable skills who can assist municipal agencies in staffing gaps.
Shea claimed that federal funding from the SkillBridge program will cover costs that municipalities would otherwise incur as they put their new hires through the academy for a number of months is one incentive for municipalities looking to hire veterans for first responder roles in partnership with the Hero to Hero program.
Shea stated that the intention is for Hero to Hero to become a national program, but that he is intentionally and purposefully expanding what he sees as a “mom-and-pop operation.” Since 2022, he claims that the program has been successful in bringing 40 veterans into the workforce in roughly 12 states.
He claimed that” I still get a charge from hooking up people who deserve it.”
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( c ) 2024 Journal Inquirer
Distributed by , Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
