Expedited Reinstatement: the ultimate safety net

When you have a child with a disability, you want to focus on what s/he can do.  You hope that once the child reaches early adulthood, what the child can do evolves into paid employment.  At home, you teach your child to master household tasks like doing their own laundry, loading and unloading the dishwasher, vacuuming and raking leaves, etc.  At school, starting when your child turns 14 and a half, you work with the IEP and transition team to build pre-vocational skills into the goals.  Then you work with the transition program’s job coaches to find your child a suitable in-school work activity.  Maybe delivering items to teachers in other classrooms or maybe cleaning the cafeteria tables after each lunch shift.  Perhaps, making sure gym equipment is put back and wiped down.  You give the team tips about written or picture schedules and breaking down larger tasks into smaller ones.  You set  alarms on your student’s smartwatch, phone, or tablet to help the student maintain pace.  When it seems like your student is ready, you push the transition team to find an off-campus internship—paid, if possible.  You work with the team to find transportation.  You open a bank account with your student for their wages.

 Then your now-adult child turns 22 and is no longer a public-school student.  Maybe you enroll her/hm in an inclusive post-secondary or other specialized program at a local college or university.  Maybe you vet all the non-profit adult service providers in your area and find one with a strong employment program.  You make sure your adult child’s case is active with the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation.  You advocate for resources and accommodations.  You coach your adult child before interviews, drive her/him to the interview, and huddle with the job coach before and after each one.  And then it happens.  Your adult child gets the job.  The supervisor had a sibling who has disabilities and understands about reasonable accommodations.  Coworkers are inclusive and provide natural supports to your adult child.  S/He is excited to go to work and is proud of getting a paycheck.  You report wages to Social Security as required.  You educate yourself about the impacts of working on disability benefits.  Your adult child masters the job tasks.  S/He then gets more hours.  Minimum wage goes up.  Then, s/he get a raise.  You are proud and happy.  Your adult child is also proud of the work and the rising income.  You are nervous, too, because the earnings are approaching the “Substantial Gainful Activity” level (SSDI) or the 1619(b) level (SSI) at which point the Social Security Administration will conclude that your child is no longer “disabled”.  But your child really loves the job, and the employer really likes working with your child.  You don’t want to get in the way of her/his success.  Then the letter arrives in the mail.  (Uh-oh.)  Disability benefits stop.  But that’s OK, because your child is earning more than the benefits were worth.  Until…

…the company goes through a restructuring.  The understanding supervisor at your adult child’s location leaves.  The replacement is not very understanding and is under pressure to increase productivity and lower costs.  Your adult child’s coworkers are now not happy with the new corporate culture.  One by one, they start to leave.  Without the former supportive environment, your adult child starts getting nervous.  Work doesn’t go as well.  Her/His hours are cut because the location is losing money.  Corporate decides to completely shutter that location.  Your adult child is out of a job, in which s/he once thrived.  This is the worry that you have been holding your breath against.  At this point, you might be tempted to second-guess your decisions.  It is going to take a while for your adult child to recover from all the changes and be ready for job search again.  The process might take a long time.  You will have to rebuild all the supports s/he had at the original job.  In the meantime, s/he still has expenses that wages used to cover.

That is where Expedited Reinstatement (EXR) can be a useful tool.  EXR is a little known but very valuable Social Security Work Incentive.  The concept is simple, although the paperwork is not.  A person who formerly received disability cash benefits loses those benefits because s/he goes to work and eventually earns so much regularly that s/he exceeds the threshold at which the SSA considers a person to be disabled.  If, within 60 months of losing the disability benefits due to earned income, the person’s earned income once again falls below the threshold, then the person can request expedited reinstatement of cash benefits, provided that s/he still has the original disabling conditions and has not experienced medical improvement.  The person can call the local SSA office and express over the phone an intent to file for expedited reinstatement.  That phone call creates a protected filing date, so that the re-applicant can take the time needed to complete the paperwork.  The re-applicant may be eligible for up to six months of provisional payments while the EXR application is being processed.  If the loss of disability benefits due to excessive earned income has also resulted in a loss of Medicaid or Medicare access, eligibility for those programs is provisionally restored as well.

EXR is the ultimate safety net for workers with disabilities who work to their full potential, lose SSI or SSDI benefits due to excess earned income and then, within the five-year window, are unable to maintain earnings above the SGA threshold.  I have written this blog from the perspective of a youth with developmental disabilities, but EXR is available to anyone who meets the criteria.