Veterans Crisis Line Gets Remote Work Exemption After Media Scrutiny
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has granted an exemption from a 2025 return-to-office mandate for federal employees. The exemption goes to employees of the Veterans Crisis Line (VCL). It follows a season of media scrutiny over the proposed back-to-work effort and how it may affect VA operations like the VCL.
Why Remote Work Matters for the VCL
The mission of the Veterans Crisis Line is to connect veterans “to real people specially trained to help” when callers are facing challenges, mental health crises, or suicidal thoughts. According to VCL, “Our responders can connect you with resources, including your local suicide prevention coordinator…”
Callers are assured privacy and “confidential support” in the words of the VCL official site.
On March 6, 2025, CNN reported ” The crisis responders who answer the national hotline run by the Department of Veterans Affairs are often talking to former armed servicemembers at life’s lowest moments, many contemplating harming themselves or others…”
CNN’s reporting that since a presidential order demanding federal workers return to pre-COVID in-office work policies includes potential violations of that VCL privacy promise. According to CNN, at one point some were “answering those calls from veterans in crisis in open cubicles around other federal workers.” (Emphasis ours.)
Some interviewees spoke to CNN “about using hushed tones and even resorting to working from their car in the office’s garage for privacy.”
Read next: Disabled Veteran Benefits Guide
VCL Office Spaces Closed During COVID
Why can’t the VCL use its own office space? According to the CNN report, VCL staffers no longer have that option. “…(B)ecause the buildings that housed the call center’s three national hubs – in Georgia, Kansas and New York – were all closed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, the people who answer the Veterans Crisis Line have worked remotely.”
The exemption potentially offers VCL employees the chance to continue supporting the veteran community has they have since the era of COVID-19–remotely.
Read next: Disabled Veteran Benefits Guide
Why the Push to Return to the Office?
The VA’s push to bring employees back to physical workspaces was motivated by a presidential memorandum issued in January, which called for the termination of telework arrangements seemingly without considering the consequences of doing so.
In implementing this directive, the VA rescinded telework and remote work agreements for approximately 20% of its 479,000 employees. Rescinding the directive for VCL employees is a step in the right direction; many feel VA operations are needlessly impeded by arbitrary back-to-the-office policies that are not created with customer service or patient care in mind.
Why Remote Work Matters for the VCL
Veteran Crisis Line employees sometimes live hours away from the nearest VA clinic or hospital. Given these facts, finding 24/7 office space to support the crisis line’s mission is problematic at best. Their dilemma with back-to-work directives is not the only one, but it’s a good example of who potentially gets hurt with such changes.
The VCL’s successful bid for an exemption is likely not the last, but each situation will likely be handled on a case-by-case basis unless there is a rethink of current policies designed to end remote work. At press time, there’s no one-size-fits-all policy about in-office work or the conditions acceptable for remote employment in the federal government. Many must make career choices based on new federal workplace back-to-work policies and related guidelines that may or may not be enforceable in the meantime.
Read next: Disabled Veteran Benefits Guide
About the author
Editor-in-Chief Joe Wallace is a 13-year veteran of the United States Air Force and a former reporter/editor for Air Force Television News and the Pentagon Channel. His freelance work includes contract work for Motorola, VALoans.com, and Credit Karma. He is co-founder of Dim Art House in Springfield, Illinois, and spends his non-writing time as an abstract painter, independent publisher, and occasional filmmaker.
