Our Mission & Process
At Ribbons and Poppies Consulting LLC, our mission is to have
every claim submitted with irrefutable evidence and reasoning with no basis for denials.
There are laws that protect you and the VA from false information and false claims
One of these protections involves your initial claim. The VA (and the U.S. Government) does not allow anyone to charge for submitting initial claims and only accredited agencies can file them. Filing a claim for compensation is a decision the Veteran needs to make, not a lawyer or anyone else.
We respect and support the VA’s efforts to avoid fraud and abuse of this system. Therefore, Cat has applied to become accredited to ensure ongoing protection for our Veterans and their families.
It’s not unusual for the VA to deny or provide a reduced value for compensation after reviewing your initial claim. Believe it or not, they’re not working on a quota system for denials, and they don’t have an incentive program to keep approvals low. They don’t want to deny your claim unless there’s evidence that you truly don’t rate it – but the process is a bit cumbersome. The burden of proof is on you.
Wading through these processes can make you feel like the world's leaving you behind as you're trying to carry a weight that feels like too much to bear, taking it through a place you've never been. The burden can be overwhelming, especially if you're trying to take care of it by yourself. Too many of us stop trying when we see a disappointing number come back from our initial claim submission. We know what we're going to ask you to do next is difficult for a lot of former military members.
Please... Let us help you with this load.
While we are not accredited yet, we are still able to help! If you choose to work with us, we start with a Q&A review of your records where you point out possible service-related medical issues and we will tell you if we believe the VA may consider them for compensation based on our past experiences. Any research or documentation in support of these issues will be your responsibility to put together and submit but we can provide you with links and information on where to initiate a claim for any of these issues you choose to pursue. This part of the process is up to you as we cannot take the initial claims further at this point in time. If you have existing claims, we review them and provide interpretations of claim approvals and denials. We identify any supplemental claim or Higher-Level Review (HLR) claim support or documentation services that would benefit you. This service is provided at no charge. Again, the initial claim is yours to submit as we don’t submit initial claims.
If your claim is denied or it’s accepted at a lower level of compensation than you feel it’s due, we can move forward with our services, applying the full weight of our expertise. We will be with you to navigate through the fog of medical jargon and unfamiliar processes.
Your claim goes before medical professionals, all humans, that look at the evidence presented. Often the evidence only comes from one source that doesn’t justify a high, much less maximum, level of compensation. However, when justification comes from multiple sources and the impact of the issue is clearly documented, a higher value is more likely to be approved. With your permission, that’s where we step in with our sleeves up, thinking caps on, ready to go to work for you, knowing that we’re now legally allowed.
Our staff includes Lynn, who has a medical background and provides research and knowledge for cause and effects. Channing attends a specialized bio-med school with access to professors that love helping decipher our cases (rest assured your data remains confidential. No names are ever divulged outside our firm). Our founder and chief research consultant, Catherine (Cat), meets with our clients to determine their needs and oversees the processes until the research is complete, and documentation for a fully developed claim is compiled. We all have a knack for discovering, researching, and revealing the little details that often make a big “value” difference. The little things that have been overlooked or ignored might just be what your claim needed.
If you're ready for a one-on-one, no obligation/no charge, consultation with Cat to see what phase of the process you are in, send us an email via the "contact us" section at the bottom of the page so we can send you an information packet or book an appointment using the button below.
Your Advocate for Navigating the VA Benefits System
This process is neither short nor simple, but we can alleviate most of the stress and time spent navigating the complexities of the VA Benefits system for claims and other related resources.
After successful submissions assistance for our family members, other service members (friends & coworkers) reached out for assistance. Many of them reported feeling absolutely lost while trying to understand the complexities to building and filing a successful claim because they felt like just another number while trying to get help from accredited organizations due to the overwhelming demand from other Veterans. We are not an accredited VSO which means it allows us more time to work on individual cases, really getting into the nitty-gritty details, and we review your medical records page by page, to ensure we don't miss anything worth supporting your claim. While the accreditation we seek is not guaranteed, we can guarantee that if we do obtain it, we will still provide individualized support having navigated the process ourselves and seeing the cumbersome, overwhelming issues that are faced.
Our Guarantees
You take measures to safeguard your personal information, so do we! Your information is strictly confidential.
- We will never submit anything on your behalf (this is for your protection) but we will guide you on the steps for submission; and we will never create any statements without first consulting you or receiving confirmation of a go-ahead in writing, to protect both you and Ribbons and Poppies Consulting LLC.
- We will spend the time needed for you to get the best possible result – all we ask is for your cooperation when difficulties arise, and some of these will, it is the nature of the beast.
- We will keep your records completely confidential – they will only be seen by Cat, Lynn or Channing, of Ribbons and Poppies Consulting LLC; they will not be shared with anyone else, and everything is password protected.
- We keep a notebook for each Veteran’s case file that details all information during our communications, logs of specific events for easy reference and any conversations with the VA or doctors on your behalf. That being said, all paperwork will be returned to you; including any that you have provided for research, that has been mailed/printed from the VA, and once scanned, even the notebook with the conversations & notes. We prefer not to keep paper copies around. All paperwork gets scanned to the external drive while working on your claim.

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