President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Sharon Lewis of Oregon to serve on the Social Security Advisory Board ... The position is subject to Senate confirmation.
Lewis is a Principal at Health Management Associates, where she consults with government entities, providers, and advocates to advance opportunities for people with disabilities to fully participate in all aspects of their communities. Before that, Lewis served nearly six years in presidentially appointed roles at the Department of Health and Human Services. There, she was one of the chief architects of the Administration for Community Living and worked to improve access to quality integrated home and community-based services by working with states, stakeholders, and other federal agencies, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Social Security Administration, and the Departments of Labor, Education, Transportation, and Justice.
Before joining the Obama administration, Lewis worked as a Senior Disability Policy Advisor to the House Committee on Education & Labor and as a Kennedy Public Policy Fellow for the Senate HELP Subcommittee on Children and Families. Lewis is the recipient of the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities Chairman’s Award and is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis. ...
It seems to me SSA would benefit from having an actual 'Social Services" department as the community facing part of the agency.
ReplyDeleteHaving people actually trained in social work and with the resources available to try and help people looking for that type of interaction.
As a CS is a field office, we have zero training with that, I was hired to process claims and really just a button mashing entity trying to reconcile paying people. That doesn't mean I don't have the ability to empathize, but what it does mean is I have zero resources to help people on SSI except to say, "check with your state welfare department.
The federal SSI program is just the monetary benefit and everything else id provided by the county or state. They're county social worker I would assume is so much more qualified to help them. Even the VA has social workers. Why doesn't SSA?