Although most people who receive and manage Social Security benefits on behalf of other individuals perform their duties well, the Social Security Administration's "representative payee" program should take steps to better prevent and detect the misuse of funds, says a new report from the National Research Council. Currently the program requires reporting by representative payees, but the process does not appear to be effective at identifying cases in which benefits are misspent. The rate of misuse, although very low, is significantly higher than SSA's official estimate, the report says. It offers a new method to aid the agency in identifying possible misuse, and recommends improved support for representative payees and closer tracking of their performance.
"Though the program is meeting the needs of most beneficiaries, the Social Security Administration is not obtaining the information it needs to detect misuse of benefits and provide the best service possible," said Barbara Bailar, chair of the committee that wrote the report, and former senior vice president for survey research at the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. ...
A national survey conducted as part of the study found that almost 95 percent of beneficiaries are "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their representative payees. And both representatives and beneficiaries understand representatives' basic responsibilities, which include managing funds to help meet beneficiaries' needs for food, clothing, and shelter. However, many representatives are unaware of SSA's requirement that any unused funds must be placed in a special savings account for beneficiaries. SSA should enforce this requirement and encourage representative payees to conserve funds, the report says. Formal training also should be provided to representatives, along with better long-term support through field staff, toll-free telephone numbers to call for assistance, Web-based information, and other avenues....
SSA should shift from auditing a random sample of representative payees to conducting more targeted audits of those most likely to misspend funds, the report says. In a small in-depth study of a specially identified sample of representatives, the committee found that those with certain characteristics -- for example, those who do not live with the beneficiary, who change residences frequently, or who have a felony conviction – tend to have higher rates of misuse. ...
The study was sponsored by the Social Security Administration.
The entire study can be downloaded for free as a PDF document by registering with the National Academies.
SSA can do all the monitoring and misuse determinations in the world, but if there isn't any mechanism beyond demand letters to get deadbeat payees to return misused funds, if there is no enforcement power in the legislation, SSA cannot do practically nothing to get restitution from the payee. Misuse determinations are labor intensive, so field offices don't always have the time to spend on making these decisions. If the agency is found negligible, SSA can reimburse the misused funds to the claimant, but the deadbeat payee still gets away with the money.
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