A letter published in the Newsletter (not available online to non-members) of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives:
I am the state lead for the SOAR program in North Carolina. SOAR (SSI/SSDI Outreach, Access, and Recovery) trains case managers to assist people experiencing homelessness with applications for Social Security disability benefits.
Recently, it came to my attention that 33% of the positions at the North Carolina DDS [Disability Determination Services] are vacant. These positions include:
NC DDS must receive approval from SSA Headquarters to hire for vacant positions. NC DDS is not allowed to hire without that permission, including hiring to backfill positions where people left the agency or retired throughout the year. This hiring policy led to an ongoing deficit in filled positions at the agency. For example, in the last year (2018-2019) DDS lost 63 employees and only received permission to hire 18 people. For the coming budget year (2019-2020), NC DDS has received approval for only 36 hires. This amount still does not cover the number of people who left last year, and if any employees leave NC DDS this year, their positions will not be able to be filled, resulting in a greater net loss for the agency.
- DDS specialists,
- Supervisory positions,
- Medical consultants,
- Psychological consultants, and
- Office assistants.
Secretary Cohen at the NC Department of Health and Human Services sent a letter to the SSA Acting Commissioner in November 2018 regarding the staffing issues. The response came back from the SSA-Atlanta region that they were working to provide additional hiring authority after the budget was established which resulted in authorizing 18 hires for the year and did not address the 63 losses.
Despite the staffing shortage, NC DDS continues to receive a high volume of applications. The high number of vacant positions leads to increased caseloads for DDS specialists which presents more challenges in processing applications. The stress of managing high caseloads causes more staff attrition, continuing the cycle of vacant positions.
Every year, SSA provides DDS agencies with a staffing and hiring allocation that is tied to their projected workload. However, DDS agencies do not have the authority to backfill positions that are vacated throughout the year. These positions are already a part of the approved spending plan so do not require additional funds.
A national SSA/DDS Strike Force team was convened in 2018 to address concerns regarding hiring. A recommendation of this SSA/DDS Strike Force team was to allow hiring authority of positions lost due to attrition, as long as it was within a DDS agency’s current funding total. This recommendation was tabled by SSA until all DDS agencies could receive budget training. However, now that all DDS agencies received this training, SSA decided that they will not implement this recommendation.
To date, I have reached out to the North Carolina Congressional delegation, SSA headquarters, and the US Interagency Council on Homeless programs (USICH) regarding the vacancies in North Carolina’s DDS. The USICH is interested in finding out more about the issue and possible solutions but need to know if other DDS agencies in the country are facing similar vacancy rates.
If you are in another state that has a high vacancy rate at your DDS agency, please contact me so that I can connect you to the USICH staff who is working on this issue. Similarly, if you are in a state that has resolved a similar issue, please contact me as well so we can learn from your experience.
I appreciate your assistance with this matter.
Thank you,
Emily Carmody
Project Director
NC Coalition to End Homelessness
emily[at]ncceh.org
11 comments:
Some states had same issues. Many cases going to FDDS with cases pending over a year. Some management not even aware of issue.
I have great respect for DDS employees since my last review. They work their butts off!!! They are SO nice in my state. They walked me through the process, and was there anytime I had a question. I was able to talk to the Adjudicator because of a special instance. They were totally awesome. I wish they had the staffing they need. I don't know how the DDS in my state is staffed, but short staff or not, I've never ever been treated so well by SSA. They were so respectful, friendly, and understood my disability better than I do. I do hope they fix this, they work hard. A lot of people give 'em a lot of guff, but people get cranky when they're understaffed and overwhelmed.
That is one courageous individual
Our HO relies on DDS to assist with medical records development. They are thorough and efficient. The medical consultant reviews are a different story, but the folks who work on developing files are truly unsung heroes. This is hectic work requiring attention to detail, and the DDS support staffers do it well.
Maybe its a way to federalized the DDS. They have wanted them to be federal employees for a long time, now they can justify it.
I do not think the Feds want to federalize the DDS. On the other hand DDS employees in most states would like to be federalized.
What has sometimes happened in the past is that the federals authorized hiring but a particular state had a hiring freeze. Another thing thing that happens is that employees from another DDS are hired so the sum total of disability examiners available is not affected.
Any word from Saul's administration why it's not approving these hires? Seems like a great way to improve service and bring down wait times, at least once the new hires get trained up.
anon@6:51pm,
Most of the DDS employees make 1/3 to 1/2 of what an SSA employee in a comparable position makes, with federal non-pay benefits and locality pay making the gap significantly much wider. As a result, SSA doesn't want to federalize the DDSes purely on a financial basis.
The states can't keep DDS employees simply because they aren't willing to pay enough money to make employees want to put up with the impossible workloads and associated misery of dealing with SSA programs.
Both DDS and SSA are perpetually understaffed. That must have something to do with gov't entities never getting the funding needed until its painfully obvious that things will "break" without some hires.... Unfortunately, because of this, the "status quo" for both DDS and SSA is to slap things out as fast as you can, and frequently overlooking important steps.
6:24pm believes the pay at DDS is toward 1/3 what it is at SSA. I think that's an exaggeration. In my experience its not much more than 60%, though. But take this into account: the DDS pension is much better than fed's. It's a shame we have to "promise" people a pension to keep them instead of actually paying them. The holy grail is to "retire" from DDS after 20 years, pull a 3k/mo pension and then get picked up by SSA for the next 10 years, retire from there pulling 2 pensions and RIb. About half of one federal component I know of is DDS "retirees".
I think 3:35 has never heard of or understood Gov Pension Offset.
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