Maxine Trent and Leona Delano, both licensed counselors, will be providing free counseling to families of service members who have or are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan through Project Home Front.
Project Home Front is a Scott & White program made possible by a $750,000 grant awarded to the medical center by the Dallas Foundation Texas Resources for Iraq-Afghanistan Deployment (TRIAD) Fund to help address the unmet mental health needs of family members of military personnel.
Ms. Trent and Ms. Delano began seeing clients at the end of January.
Military families have a lot of issues to contend with, Ms. Trent said.
“Kiddos are experiencing the stressors of deployment,” she said.
There a lot problems with children having sleeping and eating issues, particularly in families where there have been multiple deployments, Ms. Trent said.
“There are also a lot of marital issues … the ongoing struggle and strain of successive deployments,” she said. “Being a military family during times of peace has its own problems, add a war to the mix and the stress levels go up significantly.”
In addition, many families whose redeployments have just occurred are now looking at having to move to a different Army post, Ms. Trent said.
The counseling offices are in Scott & White’s Killeen primary care clinic in order to provide on-site psychiatric care for those military families, Ms. Trent said.
Both Ms. Trent and Ms. Delano have personal and professional experience with the military.
Ms. Delano is a veteran. Ms. Trent has worked for the Department of Defense and has been the designated therapist for the past seven years on the child and adolescent side of Scott & White’s Killeen clinic.
“I teach military culture to our residents. We are health science center clinicians and we are both associate adjunct instructors with Texas A&M College of Medicine,” she said.
Killeen primary care physicians have been supportive with both space and staff, Ms. Trent said. Also, Fort Hood worked closely with the counselors to make Project Home Front a reality.
There is a plan to form groups for both children and parents to deal with deployment issues and a Welcome Home Family Camp will be scheduled soon to take place at Peaceable Kingdom in Youngsport.
“We have a lot of plans to use this money in a very fruitful and supportive way for the military community,” Ms. Trent said.
While no referrals are necessary to military families seeking assistance through this program, Project Home Front needs to be mentioned when making an appointment.
The counseling is free and confidential, Ms. Trent said.
Ms. Trent and Ms. Delano have offices on the pediatric side of Scott & White’s Killeen Family Practice Clinic, off Stan Schlueter Loop, and can be reached by calling the Killeen office at (254) 680-1100 or Scott & White Mental Health Center at (254) 724-2585.
