Helping Heroes Act
Summary
What This Bill Does
The Helping Heroes Act directs the Department of Veterans Affairs to establish a Veteran Family Resource Program through the Veterans Health Administration. Within five years, VA must appoint at least one family coordinator in each Veterans Integrated Service Network and provide enough staffing and resources for those coordinators to connect veterans, families, caregivers, and survivors with VA benefits, community resources, and supportive services.
The program focuses on social determinants of health inside veteran-defined family units. Family coordinators must assess needs, build relationships, refer families to local, state, federal, VA, and non-VA supports, and maintain lists of available supportive services. VA must measure referrals, health factors, and veteran and staff satisfaction, report to Congress two years after program launch, survey disabled veterans and families within one year and at least every five years after that, and apply major federal nondiscrimination laws to funded programs.
Who Benefits and How
Veterans benefit from a VA point person who can connect family needs to health care, benefits, community resources, and wellness supports. Children of veterans benefit because supportive services include social, emotional, mental-health, career-readiness, wellness, and peer-support services. Caregivers and survivors benefit from help navigating VA and community resources when needs are not met by VA programs alone. Disabled veterans and their families benefit because VA must survey the support children receive and identify unmet needs.
Who Bears the Burden and How
VA leadership, the Veterans Health Administration, and Veterans Integrated Service Networks must hire or designate family coordinators, maintain resource lists, collect metrics, and fund enough staffing to operate the program. VA survey staff must design and repeat a disabled-veteran family survey. Program operators receiving funds must comply with Title IX, Title VI, section 504, the ADA, the Age Discrimination Act, and other applicable nondiscrimination laws. VA must also prepare a congressional report with participant counts, demographics, service summaries, costs, and outcome assessments.
Key Provisions
- Creates the Veteran Family Resource Program to connect veterans and family units with VA benefits, community resources, and supportive services.
- Requires VA to appoint at least one family coordinator in each Veterans Integrated Service Network within five years.
- Requires family coordinators to assess needs, make referrals, maintain service lists, and support veterans, family members, caregivers, and survivors.
- Requires VA metrics, a two-year congressional report, and a recurring survey of disabled veterans and families.
- Applies major federal nondiscrimination laws to programs and activities funded under the Act.
Evidence Chain:
This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers with clause-level evidence links.
At a Glance
What This Bill Does
Creates a VA Veteran Family Resource Program with family coordinators, resource navigation, metrics, reporting, a disabled-veteran family survey, and nondiscrimination rules for funded programs.
Key Policy Areas
Veterans, Health, Family Services, Civil Rights
Primary Purpose
Creates a VA Veteran Family Resource Program with family coordinators, resource navigation, metrics, reporting, a disabled-veteran family survey, and nondiscrimination rules for funded programs.
Policy Domains
Disabled veteran family survey and civil-rights rules
Identified Gains
- Disabled veterans with children
- Families of disabled veterans
- Participants in VA-funded programs
Identified Costs
- VA survey administrators
- VA-funded program operators
VA Veteran Family Resource Program
Identified Gains
- Veterans using VA health care
- Children of veterans receiving supportive services
- Caregivers of veterans
- Survivors of veterans
Identified Costs
- Veterans Health Administration program staff
- Veterans Integrated Service Network administrators
- VA family coordinators
Sponsors
Legislative Progress
In CommitteeReferred to the Subcommittee on Health.
Ms. Perez (for herself and Mr. James) introduced the following …
Referred to the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs.
Introduced in House
Stakeholder Effects
cui bono?How this legislation distributes effects. Mention counts reflect frequency, not effect magnitude.
VA family coordinators, VA survey administrators, VA-funded program operators
Disabled veterans with children, Participants in VA-funded programs, Veterans using VA health care
Children of veterans receiving supportive services, Families of disabled veterans
Bill Structure & Actor Mappings
Who is "The Secretary" in each section?
- "secretary"
- → Secretary of Veterans Affairs
- "veteran_family"
- → Veteran family unit
- "family_coordinator"
- → VA family coordinator
- "secretary"
- → Secretary of Veterans Affairs
- "funded_program"
- → Program or activity receiving funds under the Act
Key Definitions
Terms defined in this bill
Services addressing social, emotional, mental-health, career-readiness, wellness, peer-support, and other needs of children.
A VA medical-center point person who helps veterans, families, caregivers, and survivors navigate VA and community resources.
We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.
Learn more about our methodology