News and Press Releases
Upcoming Clinics: Social Security Post-entitlement / Eligibility Issues
I. Clinic Description
People With Disabilities Foundation (PWDF) will hold monthly clinics on the subject of Social Security/SSI disability post-entitlement / eligibility issues at its office in San Francisco. The clinics will provide legal advice to beneficiaries with mental and/or developmental disabilities. They will address SSDI Work Activity Reviews and SSI redeterminations based on income, whether earned or unearned, and resulting overpayments.
The clinic is open to all mentally and/or developmentally disabled individuals who have these social security issues. At this time, PWDF only has the resources to help people who have overpayment issues that are directly related to a mental and/or developmental disability. This clinic is not for people who only have overpayment issues.
The Social Security disability work incentive rules are not the same for SSDI and SSI. The clinics will cover cessation of benefits and some resulting in overpayments. Some of the main issues covered in the clinics will be Impairment Related Work Expenses (IRWE), Unsuccessful Work Attempts (UWA), Plan to Achieve Self-Support (PASS) and other special circumstances.
The clinics will be located at PWDF’s office at 507 Polk Street, Suite 430, San Francisco, CA 94102. These clinics will be offered by PWDF based on a sliding scale from $00.00 up. Call 415-931-3070 to make an appointment for the next clinic; see clinic notice on our Events page for upcoming dates. Clinics will be held the 4th Thursday of each month from 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
II. Background
Since 2000 PWDF has focused on advocating for the rights of people with invisible disabilities. Through our work with this population, especially our work with federal court discrimination cases involving the Social Security Administration (SSA), we have discovered a real need for representation and advising individuals on continuing disability reviews, which involve complex work incentive rules and regulations.
The SSA has increased quotas for the number of work activity reviews done by the field offices each year; they have determined that every dollar spent on a work review results in $15 in savings for the SSA.1 Accordingly, more people are having their benefits ceased due to the increase in the number and aggressiveness of these reviews. On top of incentivizing the removal of people from benefits the SSA eliminated funding for the Work Incentive Planning and Assistance (WIPA) program;2 thus, there are going to be more individuals on benefits who are attempting to re-enter the workforce without this kind of assistance.
Amongst the population that is affected by the increasing amount of work reviews and elimination of assistive services, those with invisible disabilities are affected disproportionately due to SSA’s lack of training and the beneficiaries’ inability to understand the complex rules and communications from the SSA. Our agency has recently settled two cases that alleged the SSA discriminated against this population regarding work reviews: see Terrence Davis v. Michael Astrue, and John Doe v. Michael Astrue.3
1 Joint Hearing on Social Security’s Payment Accuracy Oversight and Social Security, June 14, 2011.
2 Social Security Administration, “Work Incentives Planning and Assistance” available at http://www.ssa.gov/work/WIPA.html (last visited May 1, 2013).
3 Terrence Davis v. Michael Astrue, Case No. 3:06-CV-6108 EMC (NC) John Doe v. Michael Astrue, Case No. 3:09-CV-980 EMC (NC).