In a Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) asked former Lead Auditor of the Veterans' Crisis Line Brad Combs about who was answering crisis line calls.
00:00Thank you Mr. Ranking Member. Mr. Combs, during your tenure as Lead Auditor for the Veterans Crisis Line, was it your experience that responders were the only employees to answer the phones and could you elaborate on that?
00:14Did anybody else answer the Veterans Crisis Line phones other than trained responders?
00:20Thank you for the question, Senator. So, trained personnel, yes. Responders that worked every day, all day as responders, no. They did bring in people to work during overtime periods.
00:42So these were other VA employees?
00:45Other, no, I'm sorry, I should clarify. Other VCL employees who had at some point in time gone through responder training and had qualified as a responder and had been approved to work as a responder in times of need for demand.
01:04They were, they were, they could come in and when the call was put out, come in and work as responders.
01:10Okay, so these are folks who had been trained as responders but maybe are now doing some other job that's not responder training.
01:15Yes ma'am.
01:16And they were given the opportunity to work overtime to help answer the calls.
01:20Yes ma'am.
01:21Okay. Did they receive any guidance or training or currency refreshers to assist them in doing that overtime on the hotline?
01:33These non-responders, even though they had, you know, it's like saying that somebody got the training once upon a time.
01:40Now they're off doing something else. Now they, hey, you can pick up a little bit of overtime answering the VCL.
01:45Okay.
01:46Did we, did they get additional training? Did they get the same level of training as the people currently in the responder position?
01:53Well, um, so again, thank you for your question. The 2023 IG report, um, that the inspector general reflects that that practice stopped because of this, that incident that's described in the report.
02:12And in fact, um, um, um, how do I say this? Um, um, um, the deputy director of the crisis, uh, clinical, clinical operations, um, he made the decision that that practice would stop as of that event.
02:29Um, and you had to be a full-time responder or work on the, in the call center as that call center team to take a call from any veteran going forward.
02:38So that was about fifth, uh, February of 2022 going forward.
02:44You had to be a full-time responder or a call or the supervisor team operation coordinator assistant deputy director to take a call.
02:51Okay. Thank you. Um, Ms. Blaine, can you please confirm whether as recently as May of 2025?
02:58So just last month responders were not the only employees to answer the phones.
03:03As of May 2025, it was only responders that were answering the phone.
03:08It was okay.
03:09Because of my understanding is, um, you know, we've got that 160 hour of training.
03:15And I think it's really important that people who are answering the phones are the most up to date.
03:19Um, you had mentioned Ms. Blaine earlier that the VCL terminations cause delays in services to veterans.
03:24Can you please elaborate? I mean, what guidance did you receive from leadership to mitigate these delays following the wrongful terminations?
03:31With the, and thank you so much, uh, Senator Duckworth for the question.
03:36With the wrongful, um, terminations, um, we didn't get a lot of communication.
03:43That's one of the concerns with the veterans crisis line is there was not an evolving door on communication.
03:51It was pretty much like, here's where it is. Oops, we've changed directions.
03:55And going from there, just, you know, keep working as normal.
03:59So, yeah.
04:00I had, um, a couple of people that I, uh, knew through my service in the National Guard reach out to, uh, myself and some, some folks within my organization who knew us personally through the Guard who were working, uh, the VCL.
04:13Um, and they, some of them received termination notices and their supervisors didn't even know.
04:19They just got the email.
04:21That is a failure of leadership.
04:23Okay.
04:24Because that, that has been the bane of my existence at the veterans crisis line.
04:31Again, part of my responsibility at the Department of Treasury was to train supervisors.
04:36And I would often share with them, you all are literally just a grade up with no power.
04:43You're getting information at the same time that the responders are.
04:48There's no way that you could adequately prepare to funnel information down to us because your leadership fails to trust you with information and how it's delivered.
04:59That is poor leadership.
05:01One of the issues or one of the things I often say is leaders lead, managers manage.
05:08But if you have a leader trying to manage, you've already missed the mark on what you're supposed to be doing.
