Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors
[1] Founded in 1994, the mission of TAPS is to provide peer-based emotional support to all those who are grieving the death of someone whose life included military service to the United States.
TAPS sets the industry standard for training, conducting briefings on grief, trauma, and suicide pre/postvention for military commands, corporations, and professionals across America.
[7] Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) is a U.S. non-profit organization that provides care and support to families and friends grieving the loss of a member of the armed forces.
The mission of TAPS is to provide ongoing emotional help, hope, and healing to all who are grieving the death of a loved one in military service to America.
This is done through long-term, peer-based emotional support, crisis response and intervention, casualty casework assistance, and grief and trauma resources and information.
[13] By September 2001, TAPS grief and peer support programming was already well established and trusted by senior leadership when the need for such services by military families would become perhaps the most critical and the United States entered into what would become its longest war.
The impacts of two decades of persistent security threats and conflict have meant a stark increase in training, combat, suicide, and illness deaths across the military services and in our veteran population.
In recognition of both TAPS continued commitment to provide quality compassionate care for the growing group of bereaved military family members in this post 9/11 era and Carroll's decades of selfless work on behalf of all families of the fallen, President Barack Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to TAPS President and Founder, Bonnie Carroll in 2015.
Since 1994, TAPS has provided comfort and hope 24/7 through a national peer support network and connection to grief resources, all at no cost to surviving families and loved ones.
Peer hosted chat sessions, message boards, and sharing groups are an easy, yet meaningful way for survivors to connect in between in person events and further foster the sense of being a part of a special family who is always there for them.
[28] Through its network of partners and resources, TAPS has also positioned itself to be the national and worldwide leader in assisting people through grief and loss as well as training and education for bereavement professionals.
To reflect the growing need for bereavement resources, in March 2018, they launched the TAPS Institute for Hope and Healing[29] through a partnership with the Hospice Foundation of America[30] as the foremost leaders in professional grief and loss education.
[32] TAPS offers specialized care and resources developed in part by suicide loss survivors themselves, which address the complicated grief of this population and the factors that often hinder the healing process.
Postvention is an effective tool in suicide prevention that allows survivors to share their "lessons learned on the lookback" to improve best practices in mental health and reduce stigma, thereby saving lives.
[34] This annual event has given thousands of survivors of suicide loss the coping skills and encouragement needed to begin a path toward healing for themselves as well as their families.
[39] Enacted by Executive Order, PREVENTS is a Cabinet-level, interagency effort to develop the first federally coordinated national public health strategy to address suicide.
As more of these survivors reached out to TAPS for support, a common peer experience began to emerge in their stories[58] - that of being former caregivers to veterans diagnosed with often aggressive and rare medical conditions after returning from their military deployments.
The collaboration creates a seamless connection for military caregivers as they deal with the impacts of isolation and complicated grief surrounding their loved one's illness and anticipated death.
[61] Beyond the emotional exhaustion of grief, TAPS supports survivors with the many ways loss upends their lives through immediate and long term professional, financial, and personal decisions.
With compassionate and responsive support, TAPS Casework puts survivors on the path to long-term stability and self-sufficiency regarding sudden employment decisions, financial planning choices, the grinding stresses of burial and benefit questions, and the overwhelming paperwork that can pile up that includes too many reminders of life now without their loved one.
[62] TAPS Casework maintains close relationships with government agencies and service branches to help resolve issues, such as burials, benefits, records and more.
They are able to address further individual needs by diligently aligning available resources from long time partners of TAPS mission and an extensive network of third-party organizations with expertise in areas such as healthcare, financial hardships, credit counseling and civil legal issues.
[64] This includes a specially created searchable database of available scholarships for military survivors applying for both higher education as well as some available resources that help with costs associated with private grammar school tuition.
In recent years, TAPS has hosted a College Experience weekend for rising high school sophomores and juniors along with their guardians to meet with experts in the areas of higher education.
[65] They learn more about the application process, explore a range of opportunities available in college curriculum and extracurricular activities, and even spend time on professional development as they look to enter the workforce.
[67] Points of Light certified TAPS as a Service Enterprise, recognizing it effectively delivers on its mission by strategically engaging volunteer time and talent.
[80] In 2019, TAPS teamed up with long time supporters, Roots and American Music Society,[81] Jimmy Nichols, and Frank Myers, to launch its first fundraising album, Love Lives On.
