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Overview of Social Security Work Incentives Assistance

Employment Resource Coordinators will provide Benefit Planning, Assistance, and Outreach as defined as:

• Benefits counseling strategies, services, and supports offered to clients actively enrolled with DSHS DDD and entitled to Social Security benefits. This assistance is designed to:
• Focus on the enhancement of self-sufficiency and independence through informed choice.
• Promote work preparation, attachment, and advancement.
• Result in decreased reliance on public benefit programs and increased financial well-being.

Benefit Planning, Assistance, and Outreach will take two forms:

1. Public presentations, educating individuals, families, and field-professionals about Social Security rules and possibilities of employment within those rules (and, thereby, dispelling myths); and
2. Individual meetings, providing options of reaching employment goals within the parameters of personal choice, finances, and rules of Social Security.
   • In individual meetings, the Employment Resource Coordinator will review a person’s earned and unearned income and provide concrete, financial outcomes of different employment scenarios.

In providing Benefit Planning and Assistance, a key work incentive to be introduced, and, if chosen, utilized is The Plan for Achieving Self-Support, or PASS:

• A PASS is a flexible tool to allow individuals with disabilities to set aside income and/or resources in order to obtain items or services that would help them return to work or increase their ability to support themselves by earning more than they currently are;
• A PASS can be established to cover the costs of obtaining an education, receiving vocational training, starting a business, or purchasing services which enable individuals to work and result in reduction / cessation of benefits;
• Any person who receives Supplemental Security Income (SSI), or receives Social Security Disability (SSDI) and could qualify for SSI, is eligible.

The PASS plan offers superior means of helping individuals to achieve specific work goals. The success of a PASS plan, however, hinges on careful management. Individuals and families may shy away from PASS plans, as the prospect of tightly managing specific rules and goals attached to funds can seem daunting. In response, King County offers to manage PASS accounts, thereby:

• Ending the risk of overpayment or underpayment of Social Security benefits to recipients during the PASS plan period;
• Monitoring that all employment goals are successfully met (or amended) as specifically defined in the PASS plan
• Providing funds to pay for start-up costs, to be reimbursed through PASS; and
• Assuring the management of funds complies with the rules

Training Materials

Three-part training series on Social Security presented by King County staff

• First Training: Supplemental Security Income (SSI) (256 ppowerpoint)
• Second Training: Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) / Social Security Disabled Adult Child (SSDAC) (317 kb powerpoint)
• Third Training: Social Security Administration Work Incentives (1 MB powerpoint)