A lot of things can be lost in the red tape of bureaucracy.I cannot tell exactly what happened here. Ms. Greenwood is almost certainly mistaken about some important details, but I strongly suspect that someone at Social Security did tell her at one point that she was listed as deceased -- probably not realizing that they were looking at her late husband's Social Security records. I also wonder whether she had been approved in the past for Disability Insurance Benefits and those benefits were, by mistake, not resumed when her Mother's Benefits ended when her children turned 16. More likely, she had been on SSI disability benefits which were ended by her receipt of Mother's Benefits and which would not have automatically restarted if she had been off them for 12 months or more.
What Kingman resident Deanene L. Greenwood didn't expect was her life.
Greenwood, 50, came to the sudden realization roughly 10 months ago that her checks were bouncing.
When she contacted her bank, they notified her that her checks from the Social Security Administration were no longer being deposited into her account.
"My initial thought was they just transposed numbers," Greenwood said. "I really just thought it was a typing error."
With a little detective work, otherwise known as repeated calls, Greenwood said a representative with the administration told her that she had never received benefits and wasn't in their system.
Through all the calls, Greenwood said she didn't record or recall the names of the individuals she spoke with.
After a few more calls, Greenwood said a representative with the administration told her that she was listed as deceased.
Greenwood said in April 2005 she started receiving disability benefits from the administration.
She added she was also receiving payment for her two juvenile children through benefits her deceased husband had obtained.
Roughly 18 months ago, Greenwood applied for and received retirement benefits from the Social Security Administration.
Greenwood added they made her choose between that and disability, so she chose the greater retirement check. She was unable to provide documentation of this.
Greenwood said that she had packed up her paperwork, along with the rest of her belongings at her home in the 100 block of Chestnut Street because it is being foreclosed on.
Without the checks, Greenwood said she had to tap into her other resources.
"I've gone through all my savings," Greenwood said. "I've gone through the savings I had for my two children's education."
Around three months ago, she ran out of funds. Utilities were turned off at the residence.
Greenwood said she agreed to put her twin 16-year-old sons in voluntary hardship placement when Child Protective Services contacted her. During her time of need, Greenwood said that she has received support from the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Salvation Army.
Without transportation and tired of trying to make something happen over the phone, a friend took Greenwood to the administration's office in Prescott.
Greenwood said three months ago she reapplied for disability and retirement payments. She added they told her it would take between two to three months before she received notification of her status.
Social Security Administration Spokesperson Lowell Kepke said they never reported Greenwood deceased. He added they had never given her retirement benefits in the past.
Kepke did say Greenwood was receiving checks for the children of her deceased husband. He added they stopped sending the checks when she no longer had custody of them.
Kepke said the state of Arizona is currently processing her new claim for disability benefits. He added it is impossible to put a time line on how long it would take to process.
"I'm not trying to get disability," Greenwood said when told of Kepke's comments. "I'm trying to get my retirement back."
Greenwood said she applied in person for both and doesn't understand why her application for retirement benefits wasn't mentioned.
"Once you retire, you're retired - supposedly," Greenwood said.
In any case, it takes staff at Social Security to sort out this sort of problem and Social Security has an acute current staffing shortage which makes it take forever to sort out this sort of problem.
Also, by the way, the Social Security staffer who contradicted Ms. Greenwood to the newspaper reporter had no business talking with the newspaper about Ms. Greenwood's case, either to agree or disagree with her understanding of what had happened. This appears to me to have been a Privacy Act violation.
3 comments:
We cannot know if an SSA employee violated her privacy - if she went to the press, she may have signed a release authorizing SSA to release information to the reporter. As you said, she is obviously very confused as no one can receive retirement benefits prior to the first full month in which she is at lease 62 years old.
She may have gotten a bit of misinformation from SSA, but the bulk of the incorrect conclusions are both hers and, it seems, the reporter who decided this would make a good story. I would guess that she didn't read her original award notice and reporting instructions for her mother's benefits; may have relied on direct deposit and didn't report her mailing address change so she didn't get her notice of termination of mother's benefits. And the reporter seems to have no basic understanding of entitlement to retirement benefits since age 62 has been the age for early retirement for decades. Doesn't sound like SSA made any substantive errors and she may not have listened well to the verbal explanations and only heard what she wanted to hear. And the reporter thought this was newsworthy.
This is actually somewhat more bothersome than the initial alleged government screw-up--she did not realize for months that she was not getting her checks, did not understand what benefits she was getting, became impoverished and lost custody of her children--She is a textbook case of someone who was incapable of managing her own benefits and needed/needs a representative payee. I wonder if this is being addressed now?
Post a Comment