Below is a comment made about the allegation that disability claims dismissed for failure to cooperate had gone up to 30% at one California Disability Determination Service (DDS) office. In one sense, the writer is a little confused. No one is alleging that the number of dismissals went up because of any change at Social Security field offices. The allegation is that changes were made at a DDS office, but that is a quibble. In a larger sense this comment helps explain how what is alleged could happen. Many Social Security claimants need a lot of help. Many of them are frustrating to deal with. It is not easy to say where one should draw the line and say "I've done as much as I should reasonably be expected to do. Either start cooperating or your case is going to get dismissed." When employees are overworked, whether at DDS or a Social Security field office, the line is likely to be drawn at a different place than would be the case if the workloads were more reasonable. As a nation, I think we ought to be encouraging Social Security and DDS employees to go the extra mile and give a lot of help to claimants with cognitive or psychiatric difficulties, but we cannot expect them to do so if they are badly overworked.
Social Security claims reps and service reps are not social workers. Not trained as social workers, not in their job description. And many of the SSI clientele need someone to hold their hands and help them through the process, but some people are just not willing to help themselves. Just this week, I had two cases where the parent had made two appointments to file claims for either two children or themselves and a child. Our appointment calendar is so solidly booked that these appointments were pushed about a month after request. So, our office set aside 3 hours to do what was necessary to file two claims. Both parents cancelled the appointments the same day because they weren't ready after about a month lead time. How much hand holding is SSA supposed to do? The parent is the best source of knowledge, but was unwilling to put forth any effort to file the claim. The parent did not make it a priority and that is just not the fault of SSA. It is very difficult to help people who don't want to do anything to help themselves. I shouldn't care more about the outcome of a claim more than the claimant does. I would really prefer to spend my limited work hours processing claims for people who do manage to complete forms in a reasonable amount of time and who do make a reasonable effort to provide answers to the questions asked.
However, I do believe strongly in due process and applying the regulations without shortcuts and providing assistance as it is needed. To hell with processing time in some claims. But I cannot complete the ADL's on anyone without their assistance. I don't know their lives. They do.
If Astrue truly cared about correcting bad "failure to cooperate" denials, he needs to implement more accountability across the board for technical errors and provide more staff to do the work. Without staff, the backlog will grow. I still think he is using this issue as a bully pulpit to get Schwarzeneggar to back down on his ridiculous furlough of DDS employees. So, I hope he takes a close look at all shortcuts taken by SSA employees. And find a way to properly staff the agency. Automation is not the only answer.
