The Death Of Children And Social Security Disability

     Those who represent Social Security claimants become aware of something very sad. There are so many 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 deaths from accidents and assaults and deaths 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 parent who has lost a child. 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 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.

 

If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

Waiting Times Worse In Deep South

If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-866-425-5347

Disability And Homelessness

Despite the picture, couch surfing isn't funny

    From Yahoo Finance:

Many baby boomers across the country are now coming to terms with the hard reality that working for your entire adult life is no longer enough to guarantee you’ll have a roof over your head in your later years.

Thanks in part to a series of recessions, high housing costs and a shortage of affordable housing, older adults are now the fastest-growing segment of America’s homeless population, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, based on data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. ...

Now, the over-50 demographic represents half of the homeless single adults in the U.S. — with no sign of their numbers slowing, leaving baby boomers (those aged 57 to 75) particularly vulnerable.

“Elderly homelessness has been rare within the contemporary homeless problem. We’ve always had very few people over 60 who’ve been homeless historically,” Culhane from the University of Pennsylvania told PBS NewsHour. ...

    I'm sure there are many reasons for this increase in homelessness among older people but the failures of Social Security's disability programs have to be a major factor. There are far, far too many disabled people in homeless shelters.

 

If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

Memorial Day 2024

 

If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

If You're Able To Read This, Count Your Blessings; If You're Not, Expect That Others Won't Understand Your Problem

     According to a recent study 54% of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 read below the equivalent of a sixth grade education.

    Why does this matter for Social Security? That 54% account for the vast majority of disability claims, particularly those disability claims which are most likely to generate appeals. The thing is that if you develop serious health problems, you have something to fall back on if you become disabled if you've got good mental abilities. If you're a fire fighter, for instance, and your knees give out but you're not too old, you may be able to switch to being a 911 operator, for instance, because you have a little background in the field and you probably have enough intellectual ability to learn a new job. However, if  you're a roofer, you may not be able to make the transition to being a roofing estimator, for instance, because you may not have the innate intellectual ability. (I'm sure there are plenty of smart roofers but it's hard, dangerous work with poor pay so who do you think ends up in these jobs, for the most part? Did you think people take roofing jobs simply because they like working outside?) Add in increased age, which reduces adaptability, and switching to work with fewer physical demands but requiring more intellectual ability becomes extremely difficult. Don't think that age makes a difference in adaptability? You're almost certainly young. Wait until you're older. You'll understand.

    There are those on the right who honestly believe that way too many people are approved for Social Security disability, that those people may have some health problems but that they could easily switch to less demanding jobs if it wasn't so easy to get Social Security disability benefits. Well, it's not at all easy to get Social Security disability benefits nor is it easy for most of the workforce to switch to less physically demanding jobs.

 

 If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

How Do You Give Good Public Service When Your Employees Are Really Unhappy? You Don't!

    From Federal Times:

The results are in, and the Social Security Administration took last place among the best places to work in the federal government.

Each year, the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service analyzes job satisfaction among federal workers and ranks agencies against that by size. ...

    Why such unhappiness? They're overworked. Management spurs them harder and harder but no matter how hard they work backlogs keep getting worse. It's a discouraging situation.  Most of them want to give the public the service they deserve but they can't.

If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

From Social Security: Top Baby Names

Click on image to view full size

 

If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-866-425-5347

47% Of Disabled Americans Aren't Getting The Help They Need

    From a television station in New York:

A researcher estimates that over 1 million Americans with disabilities aren't getting the benefits they may need.

Zachary Morris, an assistant professor at the Stony Brook University School of Social Welfare, wanted to look at how well a couple of big Social Security programs are working for people.

Morris analyzed data on people between 50 and 64, shy of retirement age, who have work-limiting disabilities.

He found just 47% of these folks, Americans who are theoretically eligible for benefits, get Social Security Disability Insurance, Supplemental Security Income or both. ...

 If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

On Being Disabled And Homeless In Rural America

    I recently talked with a disability client who would become homeless in a few days. Actually, she already was homeless since she's been couch surfing, which is a form of homelessness, but she's about to lose even that. She lives in a rural area with no homeless shelter. There is nowhere for her to go. She has no idea what to do. She needed money immediately but I had nothing to offer. What do I tell her? Hop a bus to an unfamiliar city so she could stay in a dangerous public homeless shelter?

    While Social Security promises to speed up cases for the homeless, in the real world little preference is actually given. This client's case will take months if not years.Yes, I'll ask that her case be labeled as "dire need" but, at least where I am, that's nearly meaningless. 

    Don't sit there and smugly think that, of course, if I really tried, I could get Social Security to act on her case immediately. If you think that, you have no idea how bad things are at Social Security. Immediate help was never available to anyone not already found disabled. We are well past the days when anyone at Social Security could or would do anything to help. I'm sure this gnaws away at many Social Security employees as much as it does me.

    There's nothing unusual about her case. Being homeless in an urban areas is a terrible thing but rural homelessness may be even worse, especially since it draws so little public attention.

 

If you're in NC and want help with your Social Security disability claim, call Hall & Rouse, P.C. at 1-844-425-5347

Why Did The Rate At Which Social Security Disability Claims Were Filed Plummet After 2000?

 

    Answer to the question posed above: It's because Social Security started turning down more and more people. You can still win. It's just harder now.

    Call Hall and Rouse for help with your Social Security disability claim.