New Stats Confirm Disability Employment Woes

By SHAUN HEASLEY

June 28, 2011Text Size A A

Work was particularly hard to come by for Americans with disabilities last year, according to a newly released report showing that in 2010 less than 1 in 5 with disabilities held jobs.

The report from the U.S. Department of Labor finds individuals with disabilities in all age groups were less likely to be employed than their typically developing peers.

Moreover, when those with disabilities did find jobs, they were more often part-time positions or opportunities for self-employment and less likely to be management or professional jobs.

The statistics offer a long-range view on employment data that’s released monthly by the Labor Department.

Though the picture painted by the report is a sobering one, the hiring experiences of people with disabilities appear to be steady. Even as unemployment soared to 9.4 percent for the general population, the jobless rate for those with disabilities remained largely unchanged from 2009 to 2010 at 14.8 percent.

Meanwhile, about 80 percent of those with disabilities were not considered to be in the labor force, meaning that they were not employed and were not looking for work. Just 30 percent of people in the general population fell into this same category.

One area that did appear to improve job prospects for workers with disabilities was increased education, the report found. However, even those with advanced degrees lagged behind similarly educated individuals without disabilities when it came to hiring.

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‘Ticket to Work’ Plagued By Real-World Problems

By Brenda Brown-Grooms

The Ticket to Work Program was designed to give Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and blind Supplemental Security Income (SSI) beneficiaries an opportunity to receive employment, vocational and other support services for help obtaining, regaining and, ultimately, maintaining self-supporting permanent employment.

In a case in which the ticket holder (beneficiary) “achieves specified work outcomes” the Social Security Administration (SSA) will pay an employment network (EN) or state vocational rehabilitation (VR) agency. Employment networks work with individuals to create a work plan.

According to a Wikipedia article (April 8th, 2011), entities eligible to become ENs include one-stops, independent living centers, United Cerebral Palsy, Arc of the United States, Easter Seals (U.S.), mental health organizations, Goodwill Industries International, faith-based organizations, colleges and universities, high school and youth transition organizations, employment agencies, state independent living councils, employers and other service providers.

Wikipedia reported in that same article that, “to date, SSA has mailed more than 17 million tickets to eligible beneficiaries. Today, approximately 12.5 million beneficiaries are eligible to participate in the Ticket to Work Program, and on average, 89,000 new SSDI or SSI tickets are mailed to new SSA beneficiaries each month.” Those figures, however, do not indicate how many beneficiaries are actually enrolled in the program or have successfully achieved the specified work outcomes that result in ENs or state VR agencies being paid. In southwest Virginia (and most probably in other areas of the country as well), the primary concern should be that what the program was designed to do and what beneficiaries hope and perceive that it will do are not the same.

The Ticket to Work Program was designed to get people off disability rolls. But those who study the issue say that the ultimate goal of most people on disability is to earn enough money to get off the poverty rolls without losing their benefits and health insurance.

The program sounds good. It is supposed to help people with disabilities or chronic conditions work to the extent that they can without forfeiting SSDI and SSI benefits. The program receives funding from the SSA and, in some cases, state rehab agencies, to pay for the employment, rehabilitation and other support services accrued by a contracted agency without charge to the person with the ticket to work. But does – or can – the program work?

The Ticket to Work Program, developed and proposed by Rutgers University economics professor Monroe Berkowitz, was created by the 1999 Ticket to Work and Work Incentive Act.

When the Ticket to Work Program was being created, Congress envisioned that initial implementation of this new approach to service delivery would generate valuable lessons that SSA could use to refine and improve its programs. Based upon the lessons learned, SSA issued notices of proposed rule making (NPRM) in September 2005 and August 2007 that put forth changes to the program’s regulations designed to improve the employment network (EN) payment process and provide greater financial incentives and flexibility. The goal was to make the program more attractive to providers, thereby encouraging them to become employment networks.

The two major problems with the Ticket to Work Program are the low numbers, both of ENs and eligible people willing to participate.

Prospective ENs need to decide if the program will generate enough revenue to make it worthwhile to work with beneficiaries to achieve the goal of self-sufficiency.

There are several major problems for beneficiaries:

Their goals are different from that of the SSA.

There are not enough ENs available across the country.

They fear that, in the end, working will cause the loss of their disability benefits and health insurance.

Large pockets of the U.S. population have never seen the program work.

Disability advocates and those who develop programs to increase and deliver services for the disabled know that there are just not enough providers.

Almost without fail, government funding streams now require that the winning bidders for those monies create or locate networks (organizations allied with each other) to administer programs to particular populations for the services their money will pay for. Employment networks were designed to administer the Ticket to Work Program.

The problem is that organizations are in the process of becoming networks that meet the Social Security Agency’s guidelines to be an employment network at the same time as ENs need to be up and running for beneficiaries who need their services. (That does not even address the problem prospective participants have trying to navigate through the Ticket to Work Program maze).

Getting an individual from the start of the process to a point at which he or she “achieves specified work outcomes” is the more problematic because whether the EN gets paid is dependent upon beneficiaries achieving those goals.

Although many people on disability are eligible to participate in the Ticket to Work Program, many do not.

How the program is explained to beneficiaries in the face of continued and repeated Social Security disability reviews is problematic. No one gets disability funding without a major struggle. The words “disability review” appear to people with disabilities like an engagement in the same struggle they had to become “disabled certified” in the first place. This remains true, even though the Ticket to Work Program was designed to protect beneficiaries from Social Security’s continuing disability reviews. In the end, potential ticket holders in southwest Virginia do not believe that they will be protected.

Added to the fear that ticket holders will lose their benefits and health insurance is the fact that none of them have ever seen the Ticket to Work Program work. Until they do, they will not risk participating in the program.

Brenda Brown-Grooms, a stroke survivor, is a writer and ordained Baptist minister who lives in Roanoke, Va.

Finding a Job that is Right for You: A Practical Approach to Looking for a Job as a Person with a Disability

The Job Accommodation Network (JAN) is a free service of the Office of Disability Employment Policy, U.S. Department of Labor. JAN has two main focuses, identifying job accommodations and providing technical assistance on the employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). While not a job placement service, JAN receives questions from people with disabilities looking for work. To address the needs of JAN callers looking for employment, this Employment Guide was developed and provides a four-step process with information, tools, and resources that can be used to find the right job.

"Planning will create the best opportunity for your successful job search. As you begin the planning process, there are a couple of publications you may want to read. One publication is the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy's Essential Elements of an Effective Job Search. Also, JAN has developed Dos and Don'ts of Looking for a Job and Strategies to Consider in Seeking Employment providing job seekers helpful hints to improve the chance of success."

Below are brief section descriptions of JAN's Employment Guide, which are designed to assist with a step-by-step process for finding a job.

Step 1: What kind of job is right for you?

This section is designed to help you assess your knowledge, skills, and abilities while helping you understand where jobs are, how much specific jobs pay, and what jobs are expected to be in demand. In addition, this section contains information about who may train you for these jobs, inform you about working from home, and guide you in developing a small business.

Step 2: Who can help you to find the right job?

This section lists federal and state programs that can help you get a job. These include:

• state vocational rehabilitation agency,
• the Social Security Administration's Ticket-to-Work program,
• the Federal government selective placement program, and
• your local One-Stop Disability Navigator.

This section also lists on-line resources, such as general and disability-related job banks.

Step 3: Are you prepared for a job interview?

This section includes information about applying for a job, preparing for an interview, and completing an interview. It provides general information on building a resume, following-up after an interview, and addressing disability-specific questions during a job search.

Step 4: You got the job. Now what?

The final section includes strategies for success at your new job. Information is also provided on how to request a job accommodation and links to publications explaining accommodations for specific disabilities. In addition, this section includes information on career advancement and growth.

US Labor Department announces about $20 million to fund state-run programs aimed at improving employment outcomes for people with disabilities

US Labor Department announces about $20 million to fund state-run programs aimed at improving employment outcomes for people with disabilities

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Labor today announced the availability of approximately $20 million to fund programs that will improve education, training and employment opportunities for adults and youth with disabilities. A solicitation for grant applications is published in today's edition of the Federal Register.

The Disability Employment Initiative is a joint project of the Labor Department's Employment and Training Administration and its Office of Disability Employment Policy. Programs to be funded will serve individuals who are unemployed, underemployed and/or receiving Social Security disability benefits. The goals of the project are to improve coordination and collaboration across multiple service delivery systems, build effective partnerships that leverage public and private resources to better serve people with disabilities and, ultimately, improve employment outcomes of people with disabilities.

"Workers with disabilities suffer from one of the lowest employment rates of any group in the American population, even in times of prosperity," said Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis. "It is vital that state and local agencies work together with private sector partners to improve these statistics. Through this second round of funding, we are expanding the Disability Employment Initiative to include programs in additional states."

Grantees under the Disability Employment Initiative are state workforce agencies. Nine — in Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, New Jersey, New York and Virginia — received grants through a first round of funding awarded in September 2010 for a period of three years. This solicitation for applications represents a second round of funding; agencies in the remaining 41 states are eligible to apply. Recipient state workforce agencies will collaborate with workforce investment boards and local agencies. Awards will range from $1.5 to $6 million each to be spent over a three-year period. Cooperative agreements will be used to expand service delivery through the public workforce system to job seekers with disabilities. The programs will build upon the Labor Department's Disability Program Navigator initiative and other model service delivery strategies.

Training and employment services supported by these grants are intended to help reduce the unacceptably low employment rates experienced by people with disabilities. The complete solicitation for applications is available at http://www.doleta.gov/grants.

New technologies help visually impaired reimagine the workplace

Posted by: Mary Malone

02/28/11

Can you imagine life after experiencing a significant loss of vision? Consider the challenges you would have to overcome to return to day-to-day living. Now, think about the obstacles you would face upon returning to work. Or is the thought of resuming your career even possible?

For one employee, these challenges were all too real. The employee, a teacher, developed a condition that caused significant vision loss.

While I wasn’t the teacher’s case manager, I believe her experience highlights some of the great advancements in adaptive technologies.

At first she struggled with the basics: taking care of her home, preparing meals and looking after loved ones. Fortunately, after a period of time, her vision improved slightly. Although she was still considered legally blind, she was motivated enough to return to teaching — a return that would necessitate using adaptive equipment.

Adaptive technologies have improved dramatically over the past 10 years, and can help a visually impaired person resume his or her career. This technology includes:

• Braille translation software
• Screen magnification and screen reading software
• Optical character recognition
• Large-print printers
• Braille display printers

To begin with, the employee participated in a low-vision evaluation to identify the devices that would allow her to come back to work. She met with a vocational consultant who coordinated services with the school district. Based on the consultant’s feedback, the district purchased a number of devices, including a closed circuit television (CCTV), an orange filter and a portable CCTV, as well as voice-activated software.

In addition to her adaptive equipment, the employee was given the opportunity to job shadow and co-teach, which enabled her to become familiar with these new devices on the job. Based on immediate and measurable results, the school district offered her a new contract and she returned to her position as a full-time middle school teacher.

The employee is now focused on inspiring students to excel in school. This, in the end, may be the greatest challenge she now faces.

Workplace Possibilities

Building a strong disability management team – a primer

Posted by: Jason Denis

05/02/11

I’m a big baseball fan, and I spend a lot of my free time catching games. While a lot of people think sports/business comparisons are tired, I think that’s only because they often ring so true. Baseball teams could not accomplish what they do in any given season without a lot of teamwork. The same can be said for disability management programs.

As a Workplace Possibilities Consultant, I spend my days helping companies build strong teams to manage employee disabilities. This helps the business reduce costs and keeps valuable employees on the job. Building a team can seem a little daunting at first but if you engage these three focus areas you’ll find the process simple and straightforward:

• Company characteristics
• Stakeholders
• Team members

Company characteristics
What makes your business unique? For example, are you headquartered in one location with multiple sites across the country? If yes, is your leave administration centralized? Would it be possible to embed a consultant there who is focused on returning employees to work? Or would the consultant need to travel to all of the sites?

A firm understanding of those characteristics will help ensure your program is tailored to your company’s needs and will therefore be more effective.

(read more HERE)

Consensus is wrong on Social Security fix Raising the retirement age isn't as wise as it sounds.

By Theodore R. Marmor

and Jerry L. Mashaw

An old adage says that every problem has an obvious solution that is both simple and wrong. We fear this applies to the idea of increasing the formal retirement age for Social Security.

The widespread assumption is that the long-term financial health of the Social Security Administration requires raising the age of eligibility for full retirement benefits. This seems obvious for a few reasons.

First, although Social Security today has a huge surplus, projections suggest a shortfall in two decades unless something is done to shore up its finances. Requiring workers to wait longer to collect benefits would surely save money.

Second, Americans are living longer and staying healthier at older ages. So deferring retirement seems like a sensible and relatively painless way to help maintain America's most popular government program.

The difficulty is that the world is not as simple as this suggests, and the apparently painless reform could be quite painful indeed.

Social Security pensions are crucial to most low- and middle-income Americans' retirement income. Two-thirds of retirees get half or more of their retirement income from the program, and one-third are almost totally dependent on it. The average yearly benefit is only $14,000, so any reduction causes real pain in the lives of retirees whose working incomes were in the low to medium range.

Furthermore, benefit reductions are already taking place. The full retirement age is slowly increasing and will reach 67 in 2027. Each year of delay in pension payments results in a reduction in every worker's lifetime benefits of roughly 6.5 percent. Thus, when the current increases in the retirement age are fully phased in, workers will have experienced a 13 percent drop in benefits since 1983, when the retirement age began to creep up.

Meanwhile, premiums for Medicare's outpatient and drug coverage, which are deducted from Social Security payments, have risen much more rapidly than Social Security's cost-of-living adjustments.

Social Security's impact is already being diminished as a result of both developments. A medium earner's Social Security pension replaced roughly 39 percent of his prior earnings in 2005. By 2030, after the retirement age increase is phased in and given predicted Medicare premium increases, that figure is expected to drop to 32 percent.

In short, adequate retirement income for average Americans is already in jeopardy. And this is in an era marked by declining employer pensions and radically reduced real estate values.

Moreover, low and medium earners are least likely to have benefited from the health advances that make raising the full retirement age seem like such an obvious solution. Over the past 25 years, life expectancy for upper-income men has increased by a whopping five years. Men in the lower half of the income distribution, however, have seen their life expectancy increase by only one year. And for lower-income women, it has actually declined. Not all Americans are leading longer, healthier lives, and those who aren't depend on Social Security the most.

Low- and middle-income Americans are also more likely to have jobs that are physically demanding and to face poor working conditions. Indeed, nearly half of workers older than 58 work in such jobs, and more than a quarter of those over 60 report a health condition that limits their ability to work. Many Americans simply will not be able to work longer, and those taking benefits before the full retirement age face large decreases in benefits.

Any decent reform proposal that includes an increase in the retirement age should address the impact on low- and middle-income workers. In addition, we can expect more applications for Social Security disability benefits from older workers who simply cannot keep working until they reach an increased retirement age. The expense of these increased disability benefits, as well as of adjustments to maintain the adequacy of pensions for low- and middle-income workers, would sharply limit the savings to be gained from increasing the full retirement age.

In short, this obvious, simple solution to Social Security's relatively modest long-term financing problems turns out to be, if not wrong, not nearly as right as it appears. There is much pain and only modest gain from further raising Social Security's retirement age. Ordinary Americans, who overwhelmingly oppose the idea, seem to understand that better than our opinion leaders.

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Theodore R. Marmor is a professor emeritus of political science and public policy at Yale, where Jerry L. Mashaw is a professor of law and management. They can be reached attheodore.marmor@yale.edu and jerry.mashaw@yale.edu.

Social Security: After two-year drought, beneficiaries expected to get a raise

But the increase could be soaked up by insurance premiums

May 31, 2011|By Eileen Ambrose, The Baltimore Sun

After two years without seeing an increase in their Social Security checks, more than 59 million retirees and other beneficiaries can expect a bump up in benefits next year.

The Social Security trustees' annual report released this month estimates that the cost-of-living adjustment in next year's checks will be 0.7 percent. The increase, which will be announced in October, could be higher, depending on where prices head in the coming months.

Still, experts say, retirees could see all or some of that raise eaten up by higher Medicare premiums.

News of the potential rise in benefits didn't generate much excitement last week among seniors at the Allen Center in Federal Hill, although some retirees say they would be grateful for any boost.

"If it was $5 more, I would be happy," Frances McCready, 69, a retired cashier, says about her monthly benefit. "I would dance a jig."

The past two years have been "very bad," says McCready, who receives $616 a month from Social Security and about $400 working as a paid volunteer with the Department of Aging.

She says she lives with her son and his wife, who help her pay her bills.

"If it wasn't for them, no way in the world could I make it," she says.

The Social Security trustees projected the cost-of-living adjustment using inflation assumptions from December. Since then, the price of gas has spiked upward and then pulled back. If fuel prices tick up again, beneficiaries could see as much as a 2 percent increase.

The actual cost-of-living increase will be based on the inflation rate in July, August and September, and how it compares with the rate during the third quarter of 2008 — the last time inflation caused the government to award an increase.

Back in the summer of 2008, gas prices skyrocketed and Social Security beneficiaries enjoyed a 5.8 percent increase the following year— the biggest jump since 1982. But fuel prices quickly plunged, and it's taken this long for inflation to surpass that 2008 level.

In the two years that benefits remained flat, Medicare premiums also were frozen for the three-quarters of retirees with low to moderate incomes. But if their benefits go up, so will their Medicare premiums, which are taken out of Social Security checks.

(Story continued here)