Coming back to civilian life can feel like landing in a different country — new rules,
new paperwork, old wounds, and a world that kept moving. This page works the way a good
social worker does: sit down, breathe, and take it one honest step at a time.
Below are the needs almost every returning veteran faces, in the order that matters,
with a real door to knock on for each one.
For veterans, their families, and the first responders and caregivers who stand with them.
Based in Georgia — open to every hero, everywhere.
The first handshake matters. Somebody should be expecting you.
“One veteran stands for another as a solidarity of hope and camaraderie of peace and purpose, one veteran supporting the other.”
The We Help Heros Pledge
Welcome homeAll are welcome here — The United States Armed Forces
U.S. Army
U.S. Navy
U.S. Air Force
U.S. Marines
U.S. Space Force
U.S. Coast Guard
First, let’s get your papers in one pile
Every social worker starts the same way: before programs and applications, gather the
documents everything else depends on. Tap each step as you finish it — there is no
deadline here and no wrong order. Progress is progress.
0 of 8 steps gatheredOne pile at a time. That’s how everybody does this.
Every branch, one welcome — the colors they carried, carried together still, by every face of America.
What coming home actually takes
These are the needs social workers see again and again when a veteran re-enters civilian
life — whether you separated last month, came home from incarceration, or have been out
for years and are only now asking. Tap what you need most and we’ll walk you to it.
Need 1 A safe place to sleep
Nothing else works well without a door that locks and a bed that’s yours.
Tonight: emergency shelter, a fellow veteran’s couch by agreement, or the VA homeless line below — don’t sleep in a car without making the call first.
This month: transitional housing and programs like HUD-VASH (a housing voucher paired with VA case management) and Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) for rent and deposit help.
Long term: VA-backed home loans carry no down payment for most veterans — homeownership may be closer than you think.
Bring: your DD 214 and ID. If you don’t have them, call anyway — they will help you get them.
The body keeps the score of service — get it looked after by people who understand it.
Enroll in VA health care and book a full first checkup — hearing, vision, joints, blood pressure, and anything you’ve been putting off.
Move your prescriptions to one pharmacy list so nothing conflicts, and keep a written list in your wallet.
Teeth count. Ask about VA dental eligibility and community dental options — untreated dental pain quietly wrecks sleep, work, and mood.
Keep your civilian records together: if you use care outside the VA, ask for copies so your whole story travels with you.
Your door: your nearest VA clinic or medical center — and in Georgia, the Georgia Veterans Resource Guide (PDF) lists state services and field offices.
Need 3 Peace of mind
Trouble sleeping, a short fuse, going numb, drinking more — these are injuries, not character flaws.
In a dark moment, call first: 988 then press 1, any hour. You do not have to be enrolled in VA care to use the Veterans Crisis Line.
Vet Centers offer confidential counseling for combat veterans and families — separate from VA medical records, staffed largely by veterans.
PTSD, grief, and moral injury respond to treatment. Asking early is a sign of the same discipline that got you through service.
If alcohol or drugs are steering, say so out loud to one person. VA and community programs treat it as a health matter — because it is one.
A steady floor under your feet — benefits you earned, plus a guard against people who’d take them.
Disability compensation & pension: file or review your claim with an accredited veterans service officer — the help is free by law.
Bridge money: ask about emergency assistance from veterans’ organizations and county funds for rent, utilities, and car repairs that keep a job possible.
Direct deposit, always. Checks in mailboxes get stolen; benefits on prepaid cards get fee’d to death.
Guard your benefits: beware “claim sharks” who charge to file VA paperwork, and any “opportunity” that wants money up front. Real help never asks for your bank login.
Your door: a Georgia Department of Veterans Service field office — main line 404-656-2307 — or any accredited VSO ( DAV, VFW, American Legion ) near you.
Need 5 Work & school
A mission gives a week its shape. Civilian life asks you to choose a new one.
Translate your service: your military job had civilian words for every skill. A transition counselor will help you rewrite the resume in that language.
Use your education benefits: the GI Bill covers college, trade school, apprenticeships, and many licenses — including the tests themselves.
Fair-chance employers exist: many companies and unions actively recruit veterans, including veterans with records. Your service is an asset — present it like one.
First year out? VA Solid Start calls newly separated veterans at about 90, 180, and 365 days — answer the call; it’s a real person with real referrals.
Your door: GDVS Transition & Employment — 404-232-7261 — and Georgia’s VECTR Center, the state’s one-stop shop for education and career transition.
Need 6 Food & daily basics
Pride makes this one hard to ask for. Ask anyway — pantries exist because communities mean it.
Groceries: community food banks and church pantries serve veterans every week; many ask no questions beyond a name.
SNAP and meal programs can stretch a fixed income while a claim or a first paycheck is pending.
Clothing for the life you’re building: interview clothes, work boots, and a warm coat are legitimate needs — veterans’ closets and thrift partners stock them.
A working phone is a lifeline, not a luxury: job callbacks, VA appointments, and your people all reach you through it. Ask about low-cost federal phone programs.
Your door: dial 2-1-1 from any phone — a free, local directory for food, shelter, and essentials in your county.
Need 7 Getting around
An appointment you can’t reach is an appointment you don’t have.
VA appointments: ask about beneficiary travel pay and VA or volunteer transportation when you book — don’t just miss the visit.
Volunteer driver networks (including DAV hospital transportation) carry veterans to care in many Georgia counties.
Driver’s license first: Georgia offers veterans’ license designations and, for qualified veterans, military skills-test waivers toward a commercial license.
Plan the week, not the day: group errands and appointments so one ride does three jobs.
Your door: when you schedule any VA appointment, ask the scheduler directly: “What transportation help can get me there?”
Need 8 Family, papers & legal
Homecoming is a family event — and paperwork left undone has a way of becoming emergencies.
Lost your DD 214? Request a replacement through the National Archives’ eVetRecs system or your GDVS office — do this before you need it urgently.
Reconnection takes time. Children, partners, and parents adjusted while you were gone; counseling and family programs at Vet Centers can help everyone land.
Get the legal basics done: a will, a health-care directive, and powers of attorney. Legal aid societies and law-school clinics often do these free for veterans.
If the law is involved, ask about veterans treatment courts — Georgia courts that pair accountability with treatment and mentorship for veterans. In Henry County, that is the Henry County Veterans Treatment Court, where the Henry County Veterans Support Group stands beside participants as a community partner. See the court-support section below.
Supporters stand behind you. Partners stand beside you.
You don’t have to carry it alone — that’s the whole idea
We Help Heros is built on the accountability partner: two veterans paired
together, on purpose. Not a program that watches you — a person who knows your name.
One tap a week: “I’m good” — or an honest “I’m not.” Both answers are welcome; only silence is a problem.
A real call every week or two. Voices, not just screens.
If the silence stretches past the time the pair agreed on — two, three, or four weeks — your partner is alerted to reach out. Somebody notices. Somebody always notices.
Help stays one tap away, with the Veterans Crisis Line (988, press 1) built into the heart of it.
It begins where trust already lives — in veterans’ peer rooms and support groups,
including right here in Henry and Pike Counties, Georgia — as we grow, Peer by Peer.
The homecoming every service member dreams of — and the welcome every one of them deserves.We remember — at dawn, and always.
With gratitude: Henry County Veterans Support Group
We Help Heros did not begin in an office. It began in rooms like the ones kept by the
Henry County Veterans Support Group (VSG) of McDonough, Georgia —
veterans helping veterans, in person. This movement grew out of that soil, including the
Thursday-evening veterans check-in in McDonough, and we name our debt plainly:
thank you, VSG.
Inside the Veterans House — veterans helping veterans, one table at a time.
The Veterans House & Service Center
Where: 32 Jonesboro Street, McDonough, GA
Call:770-284-3306 · Hours: Monday–Thursday, 10 AM – 3 PM
Who they are: a 501(c)(3) founded in 2011 by Vietnam combat veteran Bob Van Dunk, who started out helping fellow veterans from his car.
Director: Jim Dunn leads the group today — the door is open, and so is his.
All free: hands-on help with VA claims and paperwork, guidance to medical care, weekly support-group meetings for veterans managing PTSD, and a monthly women’s support group.
For veterans with nowhere to turn: hot meals every Monday and Wednesday, hygiene supplies, a safe place to shower, and a clothes closet.
Court support: Henry County Veterans Treatment Court
When a veteran’s troubles reach a courtroom, Henry County answers with treatment
and mentorship instead of a cell. The Henry County Veterans Treatment Court,
part of the county’s Accountability Courts under Judge Pandora E. Palmer, was named a
2025–2027 Model Veterans Treatment Court by Georgia’s Council of
Accountability Court Judges — and its community partners include the
Veterans Support Group and American Legion Post 516,
standing beside participants and their families.
If you or a veteran you love has a case in Henry County, ask your attorney or the court about the Veterans Treatment Court — and know the VSG room is open to you either way.
About Me — tell us who you are
This page is about you: your name, how to reach you, where you are,
what you need most urgently, and what you are hoping this site can do for you.
Fill in what you can below — you do not have to have the right words — and we will
open the line of communication and work to connect you with the service that fits.
A fellow veteran, a family member, or a friend may also fill this in on a veteran’s behalf.
Every submission is reviewed for services — a real person reads what you send and looks for the help that matches your need.
In crisis right now? Do not wait on a form — call 988 and press 1, any hour.
The hardest step is the first call. On the other end of it: somebody expecting you.
How this works: this page has no inbox of its own and stores nothing you type.
“Prepare my message” opens your own email app with everything filled in, addressed to us —
you review it and press send there, the way you would any email. Nothing leaves your device until you do.
Prefer to skip the form? Reach us directly:
Not everyone who lived through the Vietnam era was proud to serve — and some were called
to refuse. Conscientious objectors followed their conscience, often at
great personal cost, and many have carried a quiet feeling of being counted less than
honorable ever since.
Not here. We Help Heros honors conscience as well as service. If you
objected — in Vietnam’s time or any other — you are welcome in this place of safety
and camaraderie, and your point of view deserves to be heard in your own words.
Share your story: if you are in Georgia — or wish to be heard from
Georgia — you can reach out directly and tell us why you conscientiously disagreed with
your military service. Your voice will be received with respect.
Contact us directly by email.
Doors that open from here
If conscience is part of your story, you do not have to carry it alone — or prove
it alone. These are real, established doors for the three roads that meet in this
box: care for the weight conscience carries, help for the factually innocent, and
protection for those who speak up about wrongdoing in government work.
For the weight conscience carries
Counseling and mental-health help from people who understand conscientious objection and moral injury — the wound that comes from acting, or being ordered to act, against your deepest beliefs.
GI Rights Hotline — free, confidential counseling on conscientious-objection discharges and GI rights, staffed by trained counselors including veterans and mental-health workers: call 1-877-447-4487 or read their guide to conscientious objection.
Center on Conscience & War — serving conscientious objectors since 1940; free help navigating discharge or reassignment as a conscientious objector: call 1-800-379-2679 or visit centeronconscience.org.
Vet Centers — confidential counseling in a non-medical setting, separate from VA medical records, at no cost: call the Vet Center Call Center at 1-877-927-8387, 24/7, or find a Vet Center near you.
VA help for moral injury — how VA mental-health providers and chaplains work with guilt, shame, and moral injury, and how to get that care: VA — healing and repairing moral injury. In crisis, call 988 and press 1, any hour.
If you were wrongly convicted
Factual innocence is real work, done by real lawyers. If you — or someone you love — were convicted of a crime you did not commit, start here.
The Innocence Project — works to free the innocent through DNA testing and other post-conviction relief, and to prevent wrongful convictions: how to submit a case to the Innocence Project (cases are submitted by mail, as their page explains).
Whistleblowing — reporting fraud, waste, abuse, or danger you saw while working with or for the government — is protected by law. Learn your protections before you speak, and use a protected channel.
U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) — the independent federal agency that is the secure channel for federal whistleblower disclosures and protection from retaliation: how to file a disclosure with OSC.
Government Accountability Project — legal and advocacy help for whistleblowers since 1977: request assistance from GAP.
VA wrongdoing specifically: the VA Office of Inspector General Hotline takes complaints about VA programs — call 1-800-488-8244; see the VA OIG Hotline questions & answers for what it handles and where whistleblower-retaliation complaints go.
A Georgia square at golden hour — the home ground this work grows from.
Home base: Georgia
We Help Heros grows out of Spalding County, in the Griffin area — but the doors below
serve veterans across Georgia, and every national line on this page serves veterans everywhere.
Henry County Veterans Support Group (VSG) — our home-room partners in McDonough: free claims help, support groups, meals and outreach at 32 Jonesboro Street, 770-284-3306, vetsg.org — and community partner to the Henry County Veterans Treatment Court. More about VSG and court support above.
Georgia Department of Veterans Service (GDVS) — benefits help, claims and appeals support, and field offices statewide: 404-656-2307.
Transition & Employment Coordinator — for veterans and military spouses finding the next career: 404-232-7261.
The Georgia VECTR Center (Warner Robins) — education coaching, GI Bill help, career counseling, and employer connections under one roof.
A social worker’s real toolkit is a list of doors that actually open. Every link below
was checked and leads to a real service — no dead ends, no paywalls for help that should be free.
If talking on the phone is too much, chat confidentially online instead. Call 988 & press 1 or text 838255 — you do not need to be enrolled in VA care.
Our soundtrack: “19”
Paul Hardcastle — with gratitude.
In honor of Paul Hardcastle — the composer and producer whose “19” (Chrysalis Records, 1985) told the truth about the young who went to war, reached listeners around the world, and stands as this page’s soundtrack. With our highest acclaim, and our thanks.
‘19’ by Paul Hardcastle
“19” — Paul Hardcastle, Chrysalis Records, played in place from the label’s official release.
“19” said out loud what so many young soldiers lived: they went to war very young,
and many came home still fighting it. That is why it belongs here —
so that no one who came home has to fight alone.
“In World War II the average age of the combat soldier was 26. In Vietnam he was 19.”
— as heard in “19”
This page exists for those who came home. It stands, first and always, in honor of
those who did not — every service member, of every branch, every era,
and every hometown, who gave the last full measure under the same flag the rest of
us came home beneath. There is no homecoming chapter for them here on earth, so we
speak their part out loud: you are not forgotten, and you never will be.
And we honor the families who carry their names — the mothers and
fathers, wives and husbands, children and siblings who received the folded flag and
have borne that sacrifice every day since, in quiet ways the world rarely sees.
Your loss is part of their service. Your loved one’s name matters here.
If you are one of those families, you belong on this page too — welcome here, in
gratitude and in grief, for as long as this site stands.
They stood for us. We stand for them — and for the families who carry them home in their hearts.
We remember — at dawn, and always.
Still standing together at the end of the page, just as at the beginning — different branches, one flag, nobody home alone.
