Shantel Cross and her two kids set three places for dinner for the veterans who live at their home in Baltimore — Charles McCoubrey, Peter Samaras and Ekkehard Thies. The three men couldn't be happier to have a seat at the table.'It's nice here. And being in a nursing home, they just throw you away, they ignore you. But here we're like part of the family,' Samaras said.
We take the guys out to the mall, let them do some walking, somebody might want coffee, we get 'em ice cream,' Cross said.Dayna Cooper, director of home and community care at the Department of Veterans Affairs, oversees the medical foster home program. 'Our caregivers treat the veterans as their own family,' Cooper said. 'The caregivers have to live in the home with the veteran, and so we really see that family bond and relationship.