ROUGH EDITED COPY
Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University
BBI-TACE Webinar: Making Work Pay
March 6, 2012
12:30 p.m. ET
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ALTERNATIVE COMMUNICATION SERVICES, LLC
P.O. BOX 278
LOMBARD, IL 60148
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This is being provided in a roughdraft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) or captioning are provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings
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Good afternoon, everybody. And welcome to the 2012 Southeast TACE webinar series. My name is Chip ‑‑ the Southeast director of TACE our mission is to ‑‑ the V.R. services and enhance employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities in the 8 southeastern states. Georgia, Kentucky, Florida. Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
Southeast TACE is a project of the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University.
And we partner with the Southeast ADA center to form Burton Blatt Institute Southeast in Atlanta. We are hosting a number of webinars this year almost one a week so if you have already signed up with us, that's great, if not please visit our website at www.tacesoutheast.org. And see what's going on for the remainder of the year.
Today's webinar, very excited about is Part 4 of a six‑part webinar series on asset development. Guest speaker today is my friend and colleague, Elizabeth Jennings. Elizabeth is an associate with the National Disability Institute in Washington, D.C. and the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University. Elizabeth is a national consultant on asset development strategies for persons with disabilities. And the consultant on building or expanding relationships between disability asset building communities. Her varied experience includes spearheading ‑‑ collaborative agreements R‑building partners, executing grant allocations, providing technical assistance on federal disability policy and assisting individuals in understanding the effect of work on Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare benefits.
So we are very excited about having Elizabeth today, but before we started I want share information some answer some of the frequently asked questions about the webinar. Today's webinar is conducted using the Blackboard Collaborate ‑‑ assistive technology needs. Makes us possible for us to conduct workshops over the internet with a connection and a web browser. Participants are able to listening to the session using phone connection for audio. If using the phone connection, these put your phone on mute. At this point, we are unable to troubleshoot individual technical assistance issues. This session is being captioned. To turn on captioning please select the CC icon in the upper toolbar to for captioning. Today's session is also being recorded and archived for future use. You will be sent a link after the session. Please share with colleagues who may have missed the opportunity to participate in this session. Also, at this time, we are advising to close all other applications that you may have running on your computer because they may interfere with your successful experience today. If you are connected to a network, do not forget to periodically touch the space bar once in a while to let the system know you are still there. And lastly participants may submit questions at any point during the webinar by typing into the chat area. Questions will be addressed at appropriate times throughout this session and during the open forum at the end of today's presentation. So at this time, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Elizabeth Jennings and very much looking forward to this session.
Elizabeth?
> ELIZABETH JENNINGS: Thank you, so much. Thanks Chip, and good afternoon it's my pleasure to speak with you today and offer you additional information on asset development and how you can incorporate asset development into the good work you do, supporting individuals with disabilities in returning to work.
On side 2, today's agenda we will do an overview of Social Security's definition of the disability and overview of SSDI and overview of SSI. And I just want to taking moment to say that those of you on the line may be very familiar with benefit rules, but just to be sure everyone is on the same page I will ask you to be patient as we go through the slides so that we can make sure everyone on the line has a basic understanding of the program and how earnings and savings impact eligibility.
We are also going to discuss the interplay of asset development strategies with Social Security benefits, when to consider benefits and asset ‑‑ working with Community Work Incentive Coordinators and contact information and dive any my questions you have. Slide 3 our objectives. As a result of this webinar, all of you counselors on the line will better understand the basic of SSDI and SSI. How to assist clients in thinking about how to use their work incentives. The interplay of Social Security disability benefits and asset building ‑‑ I did begin working and doing job development for individuals with disabilities and then became a benefit's planner and all along that time, I honestly never really thought about the financial future of the individuals that I served. I felt that my job was to help people achieve their employment goals and maintain their eligibility for public benefits. Thinking about that, thinking about that individual living a life outside of poverty, or even ever asking an individual what their financial goals were was really foreign to me. Which is part of the reason why NDI was created. It was created specific to help individuals, their families, their support, and the greater disability community start to ask, how will we make sure that everyone, including individuals with disabilities have the things that they need in order to have a better economic future.
Slide 5. Disability and poverty. I just want to give a brief overview of what you learned in the first webinar. And that is that people with disabilities are more likely to be unemployed and live in poverty than any other single demographic group in the United States. Typically individuals with disabilities live in poverty at rates, two times or more greater than their non‑disabled peers.
Public benefit programs for people with disabilities, especially supplemental security income, supplemental security income, are not ‑‑ in fact, more so than any other population on a fixed income, services and policies don't hold the expectation of economic self‑sufficiency. I am sure that many of you have seen this in your work and having encountered individuals that you support your customers what say I want to work, but not give up my Social Security benefit or Medicare or Medicaid, and you know that that happens because the benefit rules seem to prevent people from working and earning at a substantial level and under SSI and Medicaid, really prevent people from thinking about savings. And so today we will show how while these policies do oftentimes appear to not encourage individuals to earn and to save, there are pathways within the public benefit rules that can support an individual who wants to earn more to save more and to live a life outside of poverty. Slide 6 overview of SSA's definition of disability. The Social Security Act has two programs that supports individuals with disability who have an inability to work at a substantial level. You probably know them: Social Security Disability Insurance, we will refer to as SSDI and supplemental security income or SSI.
Many people who receive SSDI and/or SSI want to return to work, but are unsure when will happen if they return to work. Both SSDI and SSI have work incentives available to individuals to test their ability to work and receive some or all of the cash benefits. Slide 8, SSA eligibility.
All individuals who receive SSI or SSDI have to prove two things in order to be eligible. And I think that understanding these two things really helps you to have a good picture of how Social Security benefits work.
Individuals have to prove that they have a documented medical disability that will last 12 months or longer or result in death. And they have to prove that because of that documented medical disability, they are unable to engage in substantial gainful activity, paid work by any reason ‑‑
So let's review that one more time. So folks had to prove two things. They had to prove that they have a documented medical disability that will last 12 months or longer or result in death. And they have to prove that because of that disability, they are not able to work at a substantial level.
So you could take somebody like Christopher Reeves, everybody would agree he's a personal with a disability. He had a documented medical disability that lasted 12 months or longer and ultimately resulted in death. However Social Security might argue that that disability did not prevent him from earning a substantial amounts money. He was still doing public speaking engagements and work that would allow him to earn a substantial amount. While it appeared he had a documented medical disability he would not have met Social Security's definition of disability. The only people that don't have to meet this definition are individuals who are blind. They don't have to prove that they are unable to work. They only have to prove they meet Social Security's level of blindness. We got one comment in the comment box that maybe Stevie Wonder would be another good example and he would be the opposite. He is someone who would meet the definition of disability, because of blindness.
Substantial Gainful Activity interesting phenomenon test used by Social Security ‑‑ this is slide 9 ‑‑ Substantial Gainful Activity. It's the basic test used by Social Security to establish disability status. It's the performance of significant mental or physical duties for profit. And we usually talk about it in terms of gross earnings. For 2012, SGA non‑blind individuals is ‑‑ now slide 10. Slide 11, what is SSDI?
SSDI is a Title II benefit. There are lots of other benefits that fall under Title 22, but today just focus on SSDI. Based on a person's work history. Earned enough FICA credits, amount of time ‑‑ SSDI cash benefits can vary from person‑to‑person because they are based on essentially how much a person paid into the system. So individuals had to prove that they had a documented medical disability as we discussed that will result in last 12 months or longer ask or result in death and because of that disability they are not able to work and earn a substantial amount and that they have paid enough into the system to receive support from the system.
There's another group of people that receive SSDI that may not have paid enough into the system. And those are folks that are called disabled adult children or DACs. Disabled before age 22 and not legally married. I made an error on the slide. It says never legally married, but some recent changes to the regulations changed that language to not legally married. So folks ‑‑ they may not have paid enough into the system, but may have a parent who has paid enough and that parent must be deceased, disabilities or retired. These individuals sometimes are on the SSI rolls we will talk about later and switch over to SSDI. So it's possible that they could also have Medicaid. Even though the medical insurance that comes with SSDI is Medicare.
So SSDI folks get SSDI because they have met the definition of disability. They paid enough into the system or they didn't pay enough into the system, but they are a disabled adult children, disabled prior to age 22, is not legally married and has a parent who is deceased, disabled or retired and it's important to note SSDI comes with Medicare.
Some other things to be sure you are aware of SSDI, is that there's a five‑month waiting period for cash benefits. People have a 24‑month waiting period for Medicare. There's no asset limit under SSDI. Sometimes, we transfer rolls that belong to SSI to SSDI ‑‑ and they believe they are not allowed to save money; that doesn't apply to them under SSDI benefits, because SSDI has to asset limit. It's important to note individuals have to have their distant for 12 months consecutively. You will encounter customers ‑‑ who have incurred a disability and ready to return to work before they had the disability for 12 months that you know from the definition, Social Security's definition of the disability, that an individual has to have that documented medical disability for 12 months or longer. So if an individual were to work above the SGA limit before they had that documented disability for 12 months they would not longer meet the definition of disability. Another thing to know about SSDI is that they are obsessed with SGA. And as you remember, SGA for this year is 1010. 1010 for individuals that are not blind and 1690 for individuals that are blind. Slide 13. SSDI work incentives and wages. There are several work incentives under the SSDI program. There's are the trial work period, the Extended Period of Eligibility. Section 301, special conditions and subsidies and expedited restatement. Trial work period, to see how much they will be able to earn. Ask an individual gets 9 months within a 60 month period to earn any amounts of money and still keep their SSDI cash benefit.
So a person uses up one of these months, when they earn $720 or more.
And remember, they can earn any amounts money so it's a great chance for somebody to really go out there and try work, test their ability to work. To me the trial work period is why you folks at vocational rehabilitation are so important. Because if I incurred a disability I would be look at first off, how much money I needed to get back the lifestyle I had become accustomed to in. For me the trial work period would be the are opportunity to go to the V.R. think about what kind of work I could do to help me to earn at a level that would allow me to return to some semblance of the life I had, the luxuries that I had, my mortgage payment things of that nature. And then I would want to use this trial work period to test to see if I chose correctly? Did I pick an occupation to work ‑‑ they don't know they have a trial work period. So they don't really have a choice. Also, sometimes people get really obsessed with the idea of 720 and want to keep earnings under that amount rather than realizing the trial work period is a chance for a person to test and see, will I be able to come off the rolls and working over the Substantial Gainful Activity level and working at a level that could might my financial goals will be an option for me? This is the only time people have that chance to test and see just how much money they will be able to earn.