Join us this Veterans Day to fight Veteran hunger and homelessness through medical-legal advocacy
The Consortium is celebrating 10 years of serving Veterans in the Bay Area through medical-legal partnership
All Veterans deserve health and independence. Legal advocacy is critical.
Since 2015, our Medical-Legal Partnerships for Seniors (MLPS) Clinic has served low-income Veterans at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VA). We support Veteran patients across medical settings, including the VA Community Living Center nursing home, hospice, geriatrics, and we provide in-home visits for Veterans with mobility issues or who are homebound. We serve over 100 Veterans each year.
We identify Veterans who may need legal help by partnering with the VA, where physicians or social workers refer patients to our team. We assist with SNAP and VA benefits, Medi-Cal coverage, housing, conservatorship avoidance, elder abuse, and other legal issues.
With these free legal services, our team helps clients achieve better health, dignity, and independence. Our work has also shown that integrating lawyers into VA health care teams improves efficiency, reduces cost, and improves health care team morale.
Help us support more Veterans in San Francisco
Helping physicians address the social aspects of care
“The reason that this MLPS is important for all health care providers caring for older adults is that it helps us realize that things that improve people’s health are often not medications, not more procedures, but the social aspects of care—especially in our older adults who are at risk for future impairments to their ability to make decisions, whether those are financial or health care decisions.”
-Eric Widera, MD, Director of Hospice and Palliative Care, and Geriatrics Fellowship Director at San Francisco VA Health Care System
Serving high-need, vulnerable older Veterans with heart
Our legal advocacy is a high-touch approach that helps forge and maintain close relationships with our clients. The heart and soul of our MLP project for Veterans is Sara Huffman, Managing Attorney, who is a UC Law alumna with specialized expertise in the rights and needs of low-income Veterans. Sara not only provides direct services to clients, but mentors law students and recent graduates in learning to work alongside health care teams to provide medical-legal care of veterans.
With your help, we can serve more Veterans
San Francisco is home to over 13,000 senior Veterans. Rapidly rising living costs and displacement of middle- and low-income individuals from the housing market have made it more urgent than ever for many Veterans to obtain legal assistance, as the lack of support increasingly puts their well-being and stability at risk.
Recent cuts and threats to federal services, grants, and supports makes defending remaining entitlements for Veterans all the more urgent.
Health care and legal care go hand-in-hand
Every health crisis has the potential to trigger a complex legal crisis. Here is just one example:
After the first meeting with Mrs. F, an older Veteran recovering from a serious illness at the San Francisco VA Medical Center Hospital, we learned she needed additional monetary support for temporary in-home care upon discharge.
While assisting Mrs. F in securing VA and state benefits to support her care, we noticed inconsistencies that led us to uncover a related issue: during her hospitalization, a family member had engaged in egregious financial elder abuse, of which the Veteran was unaware.
We promptly stopped the financial abuse and connected Mrs. F with another legal service provider for her civil lawsuit.
Without comprehensive advocacy to defend her access to in-home care and economic resources, Mrs. F would have been at risk for losing her housing and/or having to move to more institutional care. Either outcome would have resulted in significant health and psychosocial consequences to her, as well as increased health care costs to her and to the federal government.
When Veterans can access care in their own homes, are protected from abuse, and have access to economic supports, we honor their service and we all win.
What is a Medical-Legal Partnership?
Our MLPS Clinic embeds UC Law faculty, attorneys and students into the health care setting to address unmet legal needs. Our team works with health care teams to resolve legal issues that studies have shown impact physical and mental health of older Veterans, such as unsafe housing or impending eviction, health insurance and income problems, family and personal stability, and access to benefits such as SNAP.
Imagine, a major barrier for discharging older Veterans from hospitals is often the lack of a durable power of attorney. Simple, free estate planning can give patients’ wishes the power of law and remove barriers to care and housing.
We also consult with clinicians on legal issues that may affect our clients’ health care, and we provide training to health care staff on identifying social needs with legal underpinnings.
How we care for the legal needs of older Veterans is a model in the National Center for Medical Legal Partnership toolkit.
MLPS is nationally known and recognized for its training, research and advocacy on behalf of Veterans, older adults, and caregivers.
Honor a Veteran today, and support our work
Help us fight for Veterans and reduce hunger and homelessness here in San Francisco through medical-legal advocacy.
Together, we can support Veterans in our community and help them achieve better health, dignity, and independence.