"Not Something The State Foresaw"

From the Charleston, WV Daily Mail:

Several thousand low-income West Virginia children who are also blind or disabled could see a one-month reduction in their federal disability benefits, the result of a decision by the state Department of Health and Human Resources.

Faced with a deadline for using millions of dollars in one-time federal stimulus funds, the department decided to send tens of thousands of children $250 extra for school clothes and supplies.

The Social Security Administration at this point views those checks as income.

In West Virginia, about 9,300 low-income blind or disabled children received Social Security Income benefits.

Because the receipt of those benefits is based on income level, any extra money the children receive - including the money from the state for school clothes - causes a reduction in the amount the children receive from the federal Supplemental Security Insurance program.

"It's reducing (SSI) dollar-for-dollar based on the amount of money they get (from the state)," Robert Jeffries, a spokesman for the Charleston field office of the Social Security Administration, said Monday. ...

Doug Robinson, deputy commissioner of the state DHHR's Bureau of Children and Families, said the SSI reduction was not something the state foresaw when it decided to send out the $250 checks. He called the federal standards "unfortunate."