Field Offices Workloads

     Below is an illustration from the testimony of Katherine Zuleger of Wausau , WI. President, Chicago Social Security Management Association, Executive Committee Member, National Council of Social Security Management Associations to the Senate Finance Committee on June 18, 2024 on Work and Social Security Disability Benefits (I can't help thinking that some of this looks like an illustration from a sex education textbook!):

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Here are what those acronyms mean, as best I know them:

• AUX -- Auxiliary claims, such as child claims
  
• CDR -- Continuing Disability Review
• CO -- Central Office 
• CSNO -- Centralized Special Notice Option (I don't know what that is.)
• ERPA -- Electronic Representative Payee Annual report
  
• GI -- I think General Information in this context
  
• MDW -- Modernized Development Worksheet
  
• MNUP -- Medicare Non-Utilization Project (to determine why an elderly person isn't using Medicare -- like maybe the person is dead.)  
  
• PSC -- Program Service Center -- where Title II benefits are computed, among other things
• RO -- Regional Office    
• RPMT --  ?
  
• TSC -- Teleservice Center -- where they answer most telephone calls to the 800 number    
  

Deaths Of Children And Social Security Disability

    If you're directly involved with Social Security's process of disability determination, have you noticed the number of claimants who have suffered the death of a child? I've got no numbers but I've been struck over the years by how frequently this comes up. I'm talking about adult children as well as young children. I'm talking about deaths from disease as well as death in accidents and assaults and death by drug overdose. We all know these deaths occur and that they're tragic but, thank goodness, it's uncommon. Yet, it seems that once a month I'm seeing a case. We all know that these deaths have terrible effects upon families when they do occur. Most of the time it's not psychiatric illness that gets the claimant but a very real physical ailment.

    I wish someone would do a study on this.

    I don't know how people survived in the bad old days when childhood deaths were so common. My own grandmother was a generally cheerful woman and certainly a wonderful person to me but there always seemed a tinge of sadness about her. I only found out later that she had lost two children to a typhoid epidemic before my father was born and was never quite the same again. (Yes, I'm that old but typhoid epidemics aren't as far back in this country's history as you might think.) I now possess a memorial quilt that she made after these deaths. I'm sure that making that quilt helped with her grief.

Answers Hard To Come By For Those Formerly In Foster Care

    From NPR:

It's been almost 45 years since Kathy Stolz-Silvis was in foster care in Pennsylvania. Stolz-Silvis was nine when her father died, making her and her siblings eligible for Social Security survivor benefits. But she didn't become aware of those benefits until decades later — after reading an investigation published by The Marshall Project and NPR. ...

"Out of curiosity, I called them to find out what happened to my benefits when I was in foster care," Stolz-Silvis said. "The person on the other end of the line told me they were not allowed to give me that information." ...

In recent months, The Marshall Project and NPR have heard from dozens of former foster youth who described similar failed efforts to learn whether a state or local agency had applied to become their "representative payee," allowing the agency to receive their federal benefits, a process permitted by federal regulations. ...

In an email, Darren Lutz, a spokesperson for the Social Security Administration, said that for those inquiring about past benefits: "We maintain records on the benefits we have paid and can answer their questions." The agency has "provided guidance and training to our employees on our rules and requirements for selecting representative payees, notifying the proper parties, and monitoring the performance of foster care agencies that serve as the representative payee for a child in foster care."

For current foster youth, Administration for Children and Families spokesperson Pat Fisher confirmed that both the agency and the Social Security Administration are developing joint guidance to state agencies about how to handle these cases, though there is no timeline for releasing it. ...

Social Security Underpaying Many Children

     From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

... Children may receive benefits if they are younger than age 18 and their parent is entitled to Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance benefits. They may also qualify for benefits if they are 18 and older when they are a student at an elementary or secondary school. 

To be entitled to student benefits, beneficiaries must attend an educational institution full-time (at least 20 hours per week) and be age 19 and 2 months or younger. Student benefits cease either the month after the student stops attending school full-time or when the student attains age 19 and 2 months, whichever is sooner. 

We identified 16,632 beneficiaries who were entitled as children and placed in terminated payment status when they reached age 18; however, SSA recorded they remained full-time students past the termination month on the benefit record. 

SSA did not have adequate controls to ensure children who reached age 18 and still attended school received benefits. SSA did not properly continue benefits for 87 of the 100 students in our sample once they reached age 18, which resulted in $357,872 in underpayments. Based on our sample results, we estimate SSA underpaid 14,470 beneficiaries approximately $59.5 million.

We concluded SSA employees incorrectly input student information on beneficiaries’ records while using the Post Entitlement Online System and Modernized Claims System. This resulted in the termination of benefits for students aged 18 despite evidence of their continuing student enrollment. Further, SSA’s Title II Redesign System generally did not create alerts instructing SSA employees to determine whether students were still due benefits past age 18. ...

    I understand that this report may be attracting media attention. It should. This is poor performance.

    Update: I said this was attracting media attention. Turns out it's started even sooner than I thought. Joe Davidson at the Washington Post has a piece out on the problem.

NYC To Stop Taking Children's Benefits

    From National Public Radio:

Child welfare officials in New York City say they will stop collecting all of the Social Security checks from children in foster care and using that money to cover the costs of their care, altering a practice criticized by advocates for children. And those advocates say they hope New York's action becomes a model for agencies across the country.

Jess Dannhauser, commissioner of the Administration for Children's Services, New York City's child protection agency, says soon the Social Security money will be placed in savings accounts that children can access when they leave foster care–either when they return to family, are adopted or age-out of foster care between ages 18 and 24. ...