Morano asks about FY25 increase in discharge upgrades
Morano asks about the FY25 spike in discharge upgrade seekers. Nicole reports no similar trend in FY26 but notes increased need compared to FY22, attributing the spike to better outreach, stronger partnerships, and the federal landscape including the trans ban.
In fiscal year 25, the number of veterans seeking discharge upgrades drastically increased among all genders and military branches.
What changed?
Are you seeing a similar trend this year?
Currently for fiscal year 26, we did not see a similar trend.
What we do see is that there's still that increasing need compared to fiscal year 22, where we only had two people.
So for us, we think that what contributed to that spike was different outreach efforts, awareness of the services, stronger partnerships that we are having with our legal service providers.
And as we are continuing to build that capacity as well, we anticipate that for that to increase.
We also believe that in this landscape that we're in with the trans van being introduced in January of 2025, there's a lot of
stigma and a lot of discourse going on in the community where people may be more than not likely to actually identify and to actually come out for those benefits and supports.
So we do think the federal landscape has some effect on that as well.
And that's why we wanted to highlight the important need of, and I think it goes back to what you mentioned about how many people know about the dual
discharge program that is in place at the moment, because that will also give.
that support system that they need, but also feel welcome and feel that, hey, there's support here for us.
So that is something that we do want to do better and highlight that program that we have in place.