Purdue receives grant for military families

A Purdue University research organization has received $8.9 million to reach out to struggling military families in Indiana.\nLilly Endowment Inc. announced last week that it gave Purdue’s Military Family Research Institute a grant to study how to best meet the needs of military families in Indiana on key issues such as dealing with deployment and adjusting to life after service.\nThe grant comes just six weeks before Indiana’s 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team will be mobilized before being deployed to Iraq in early 2008.\nPurdue Military Family Research Institute Director Shelly MacDermid said almost one-fourth of Indiana’s 14,000 National Guard members will be deployed.\n“Obviously there is a lot of work to be done,” she said. “But it also means that this grant comes at a very good time, and we are going to try to make ourselves useful.”\nThe grant will focus on the needs of military families before, during and after deployment, identifying and providing personal assistance to veterans and educating professionals on the special needs of combat veterans and their families.\nMacDermid said soldiers need help in areas such as physical and mental health, finding regular jobs and readjusting to everyday life.\n“They face a list of issues that they may not be getting help with,” said Gretchen Wolfram, communications director for Lilly Endowment Inc. She added that one of the institute’s main focuses is giving professionals and volunteers close to the families information on how to deal those specific problems.\n“A lot of people who want to help might not know how to do it,” Wolfram said.\nThe research institute at Purdue was opened in 2000 by the U.S. Department of Defense and is the only one of its kind, MacDermid said.\n“Up to now we’ve had a global mission,” she said. “We haven’t had a lot of funding which allows us to focus on our own state.”\nThe grant is part of a larger, four-part effort by the Lilly Endowment Inc., which will donate almost $20 million to help address special needs of veterans and their families, Wolfram said. Other grant recipients include the Indiana National Guard Relief Fund. \nWolfram said the Lilly Endowment has given to the relief fund for three years but has been looking for other ways to help veterans. \nShe said the main goal is to help stop veterans from disappearing into normal lives when they come back without receiving the proper care.\n“These families are out of sight, out of mind, but their needs are there,” she said.