CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Disability benefits disbursed by the Social Security Administration add up to $100 billion per year, according to Tanya Gallagher, the dean of the College of Applied Life Studies and director of the Disability Research Institute (DRI) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“This is a huge program, affecting more than 10 million lives,” said Gallagher, who is working closely with researchers from across the country, national disability leaders and government officials to refine and redesign key policies and procedures employed by the agency’s Office of Disability and Income Security Programs. The team’s chief goals include improving, strengthening and streamlining the system – in part to help keep SSA’s budget in check, but more important, to provide persons with disabilities the tools and strategies required to improve the quality of their lives through employment.
Among the beneficiary groups targeted by DRI and the SSA are youths with disabilities.
“Children are not transitioning to work at very high levels,” Gallagher said. “So what can we do to help maximize self-sufficiency? I’m not talking about just making sure they’re employed, but employed in real jobs with real incomes. Maybe there’s more we can do.”
Among the broader reforms in the works at the SSA is what Gallagher calls “a really historic process for determining whether an individual will be receiving disability income.” Gallagher said the plan, unveiled to members of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Ways and Means last September by SSA Commissioner JoAnne B. Barnhart, is aimed at “improving the accuracy and timeline for the determination process so those people who need help will get help.”
Those improvements are among the topics that will be discussed when disability experts, disability-rights advocates and government leaders convene at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on March 16 to take part in an interactive symposium. Organized by the Disability Research Institute, the symposium will focus “SSA Disability Programs: Facilitating Employment.”
The daylong program, which begins at 8:30 a.m., will feature remarks by Gallagher and Martin Gerry, deputy commissioner of SSA’s Office of Disability and Income Security Programs. In addition to a panel presentation and discussion on the disability determination process, three other panels will consider various proposals to equip persons with disabilities with skills and services required to enter the work force. Those presentations will focus on return to work and transition to work issues, and the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Program.
Posters about recently completed and ongoing projects by researchers affiliated with DRI will be on display in the First Amendment Lounge during the symposium. Researchers will be available to discuss their work during the lunch break, from noon to 1:15 p.m.; the posters will be exhibited throughout the afternoon.
A complete symposium schedule is available on the Web.
DRI, which is funded by a five-year, cooperative agreement from SSA’s Office of Research, Evaluation & Statistics and housed in the College of Applied Life Studies at Illinois, was established in 2001 to assist SSA by conducting research that would inform policies and procedures impacting the lives of applicants and recipients. The institute, which has received more than $13 million to date, functions both as national network for researchers examining a host of disability issues, and as a conduit for communicating those ideas to the SSA.
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