The mission of the Kansas Commission on Veterans’ Affairs (KCVA) is to provide Kansas veterans, their relatives, and other eligible dependents with information, advice, direction, and assistance through the coordination of programs and services in the fields of education, health, vocational guidance and placement, and economic security. These programs include nursing and domiciliary care and veterans’ cemeteries. This mission is accomplished within program areas of Agency Administration, Veteran Services, the State Veterans' Cemetery Program, the Kansas Soldiers' Home, the Kansas Veterans' Home, and the State Approving Agency.
Vision
The KCVA has an advantage that few similar organizations can claim: our members, from the Chairman to the junior administrator, appreciate and respect the service of veterans and thus have a genuine desire to ensure those veterans receive the entitlements they deserve. This attitude permeates all areas of the Agency, and we must ensure that it continues to do so.
The Agency has four primary and disparate missions, but they combine in an overarching program to link veterans with the benefits they should enjoy for their service and sacrifice. Those benefits – from the State of Kansas and the United States government – are complicated and extensive, just as they are often precious and generous. They have been given in gratitude, and the KCVA must continue to be conscientious stewards of the treasure that has been made available. The Agency represents the Governor and the Kansas legislature in this regard while it operates under the auspices of its governing Commission.
Our operations must be broad-ranging, active, and flexible. Just as the nature of military service to our country is dynamic, so must the KCVA be dynamic in adjusting to veteran demographic changes. We should seek to expand our services when the need exists, and we should retract them if the need is no longer there (but not just because it is expedient). We must seek out veterans in Kansas to ensure that they are informed of the ever-changing benefits available from the State and the federal Department of Veterans Affairs. Often veterans and their dependents do not know what they don’t know, so we must reach out to them aggressively wherever they might be.
The Agency must be sensitive to the needs of veterans who served long ago while being equally alert to the needs of new veterans whose service is recently completed. That means that while it must stay abreast of the benefits and needs of veterans from the Korean War, World War II, and Viet Nam War eras, for example, it must also be attuned to the benefits and needs of homeless veterans and those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The KCVA’s programs must continue to offer support to veterans in all phases of their lives – from immediate post-service when jobs and further education are most important, to later when medical claims and nursing care are paramount, and ultimately to a time when those veterans pass away and their survivors may require a veteran's final resting place.
Finally, the KCVA must be an active partner in a loose network of federal, state, and non-governmental organizations that support veterans. We must work collaboratively with all of those organizations, because while we have no direct authority, we complement each other in our one common and enduring goal: taking care of veterans.