Jennifer Cronenberg, NOSSCR Chief Counsel for Legal Education & Disability Law

You won your client’s case. They’ve been paid, and all is well. You send them a closure letter asking them to refer friends and family, and urge them to notify SSA at once if they return to work. But could you be doing more? Should you be? What if they call you in a year or two with questions about working? Are you armed with the needed information to guide them through their options?

Debora Wagner from Cornell’s Yang-Tan Institute is an expert in Social Security’s work incentives programs (and an excellent conference speaker—seek out her sessions whenever possible!). At NOSSCR’s Washington, DC conference, several members expressed a desire for representatives to be armed with more information regarding post-work programs. We asked Debora if she could help and, lucky for all of us, she sprang into action. Below are the resources that she created. There are three documents. The first is a checklist that you should go over with a Title II claimant after award, the second is for an SSI claimant, and the third is a handout that you can mail to your client with the closure letter providing them with additional resources.

These documents are not intended to force you into work that you do not have time to complete, or to speak on matters where you aren’t comfortable. Rather, they are a roadmap so that you can provide the basic needed information, offer some hope for the future, and point claimants to the correct programs and resources. We encourage you to download the handouts below. Make copies. Pass them out to everyone in your office. Put them into use with your clients. And email us if you have any questions. The post-award landscape can feel very daunting and the urge to refer clients who ask about options elsewhere is understandable. But hopefully, with these resources, you’ll be better armed to guide claimants through their options at the time of award so that they know where to turn should their circumstances improve.