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Wounded Warriors helps first responders

Wounded Warriors Canada wants to extend the help it gives veterans to first responders

By PAUL COWLEY

Advocate staff

Wounded Warriors Canada sees Remembrance Day as a time to acknowledge the sacrifice of those living with operational stress injuries as well as honouring the fallen.

There are many first responders coping with post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) and his organization has begun working to provide programs to help them and their families, as well as military veterans, said Scott Maxwell, Wounded Warriors executive director.

“As our program has developed and delivered and grown over the past couple of years we have been inundated and are in constant interaction with the first responder population, who have come forward to ask if they can have similar access to the programs we are funding.”

“That’s what we want to do and that’s where we’re going,” he said.

Wounded Warriors Canada announced last month it is funding a program of Can Praxis, a couples equine therapy program to help those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. It is offered in Rocky Mountain House and Whitby, Ont.

Wounded Warriors is reaching out to key people with police, fire and emergency services associations to look at ways they can work together.

“It doesn’t take that long. It’s just a matter of establishing the right conversations with the right people,” he said.

Police forces have already begun coming on board. In Ontario, York Regional Police was the first to form a partnership with Wounded Warriors and Toronto Metropolitan, Ontario Provincial Police and Waterloo Police followed suit.

Maxwell said he hopes to expand to other police forces, including the national RCMP, now that they have a “template for success.”

Wounded Warriors is committed to providing equal access to its programs, where spaces are available, no matter where someone lives in Canada.

pcowley@www.reddeeradvocate.com