John Halliday

Senior Program and Policy Specialist

Institute for Community Inclusion, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Disability Research Institute 2005 Symposium

April 5, 2005

National Press Club, Washington, DC

The Routes to SSDI/SSI

• Structural elements of the human service, medical services and community service systems that lead individuals to apply for SSDI & SSI

• The “engineering” of dependency

• SSDI & SSI as the constant variable in an array of financial resources that support an individual.

The Transition Route

The continuation of publicly funded supports & services from childhood to adulthood

The Community Support Route

The need to ensure the availability of resources that are identified as essential to the ability of the individual to function &

for the community to have a sense of stability.

The Decreased Risk Route

Decreasing exposure to economic variations.

Increasing options for core stability for individuals

Community Economic Stability

Financial strategies that maintain the individual at a base level of resources.

Financial strategies that limit the risks to local, state & private funding streams

Triage Variables

• Stable

• Recoverable

• Intermittent

• Co-occurring

• Wellness

Employment

The “Adjunct” to benefits – the flexible variable in the financial system that

supports the individual within the human services network.

Partial employment as the expected employment outcome.