Ticket to Work: Auto Pay and the Beneficiary CD Ticket to Work Tools to Support You As

Ticket to Work: Auto Pay and the Beneficiary CD – Ticket to Work Tools To Support You As an Employment Network

Event ID: 1291795

Event Started: 2/27/2009 7:00:00 PM

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Please stand by for realtime captioning.

(Ray Cebula) Good afternoon, everyone. This is Ray Cebula fromCornellUniversity employment and disability institute and I am here with Jeff Trondsen who’s our technical support wizard and Sheila who you’ve all dealt with to register for the webinar. Today we are welcoming Emily Malsch from CESSI who will be leading us through the workforce development system and Ticket to Work webinar. She has a host of guests with her who will be helping her present today. My job this afternoon is to serve as your host. We have a series of questions submitted before the webinar began. We will be endeavoring to answer some of those questions after each presenter has finished with their substantive presentation. We have a large group with us today. There is a manner in which you can participate by submitting your questions during the webinar which we'll discuss in a second. Please be aware that we're not possibly going to get to every question. It is just we don't have time to do that in 90 minutes, but what will happen is that all of the questions that were submitted prior to and during the webinar will be tallied up and sent out to the presenters and over the course of the next few weeks will be answered, and all of the answers will be distributed to all of the participants as soon as they have been compiled.

> If we could move on to the next slide.If we don't have the text slides, I can talk people through it. What you have on the right-hand side of your screen is a webinar console. If you look at that screen, there is questions with a little plus sign to the left of it. If you click on the question plus sign, it will open a question and answer box. You can type your question into that box, hit submit, and it will appear on my desk, and I can provide Emily and the presenters with those questions when they become relevant to the discussion. At the end of the webinar today Emily or I will click on that little X in the far right-hand corner of your screen and that should shut down the webinar for you. If it does not, you click on that X and it will close it down for you. And with that, I will turn it over to Emily to take you through the substance. Take it away, Emily.

(Emily Malsch) Thank you. Welcome, everybody, today. We appreciate your participation in this webinar, especially being a Friday afternoon, and we do appreciate your time sitting with us for the next hour-and-a-half or so. We hope this will be an informative webinar and you all will gain something out of it and hopefully get your questions answered, but most importantly we hope you enjoy this and you have come here and learned what you're hoping to learn and that we have great information we're going to share with you today. This is the workforce development Ticket to Work webinar. We will be talking and you should have in front of you the very first page of our PowerPoint which I give you just a title here, the auto pay and the beneficiary CD, ticket tools to support you as an employment network. We hope you have logged in and are in the correct webinar.

> Let's go ahead and I want to flip to the next slide. As I mention we will talk about the auto pay option and the beneficiary referral CD and of course additional resource and supports that are available. This is the agenda. We are going to open the webinar today with a note from Dan O'Brien who is a deputy associate Commissioner with Social Security office of employment support programs, OESP for short, and then we're going to have Felix Stump with Maximus, the education and to give you a brief over view and specifically the auto pay option as he know that many folks on today's webinar are very interested in the auto pay option and what this entails.

> We're next going to move into the beneficiary referral CD. Joan Berman with the program acquisition team at OESP is going to go over the particulars when it comes to how to access that CD, how do you get ahold of that CD if you are indeed interested in that. I know many folks on this webinar are of course interested in knowing how to effectively market their services as in the end to the beneficiaries, and the beneficiary referral CD is just one of those resources you as an approved EN can utilize to market your services, so Joan will walk you through that process, especially with the new federal security requirements in place. She is going to give you an over view about the requirements and how to access the CD and as I mentioned we're going to go quickly through additional resources and support. We have Elizabeth Jennings on the webinar today, she is a program associate and with the national disability institute and one of our subcontractors with PMRO, the program manager for recruitment and outreach. I am sure many of you on the webinar have spoken toElizabeth in the past and talked to even myself. My name is Emily MALSCH. I am the team lead and the One-Stop account manager on the PMRO team. I am responsible for recruiting organizations into the ticket program, doing some outreach and education and providing organizations including One-Stops information about the new ticket program and helping to understand the great opportunity that exists for them.

> So without further delay I will turn it over to Dan O'Brien. Dan, go ahead and take it away.

(Dan O’Brien) Thanks, Emily. This is Dan O'Brien. Welcome, everybody, on behalf of Social Security and Sue Suter our associate Commissioner. I wanted to say a quick recap for to kind of set the ground work, we're really excited about the One-Stop system coming in to the ticket system. We think this is a new source of revenue, a significant source of revenue for the One-Stop system, and it is a significant enhancement of the services available for our beneficiaries, and some states we have the state workforce board coming in and representing the whole state and some states it is the individual workforce board, so we're very excited about the response we've gotten so far and about Emily and Elizabeth working with the One-Stops to join the program. Just want to make a few points just so everybody is aware that voluntary program for our beneficiaries. There about 11 million beneficiaries that have tickets. The ticket, the value of the ticket and Felix will talk about this in a minute is over $20,000 in term of -- 20,000 in terms of funding for the employment network which in this context would be the One-Stop or the workforce system, and of those not all 11 million we know not all of those 11 million beneficiaries are going to want to return to work, but in the surveys we have done, we know there is about 4 million of those beneficiaries who want to work and have work goals for themselves and about 2 million of those who say in our survey that say they want to work their way off the roles in the next 1 to 5 years, so we think that 2 million is probably the target group for the One-Stops and the employment networks. Those are the people who want to go to work right now and are looking for help to do that. We think the One-Stops are particularly well-positioned to do that.

> It offers beneficiaries choices of where they want to see the employment services and we know that a lot of beneficiaries are choosing the workforce One-Stop system without even being encouraged, it is just the Iowa workforce folks took the beneficiary CD that we're talking about later in this program, they matched it up with folks they served, and they took out the V R clients, and they were shocked at how many people I think 3,000 or 4,000 of beneficiaries had served without even trying, and so I know that the beneficiaries they have their ticket. When they decide to go back to work, they're looking for the resources in the community, and a lot are choosing the workforce system to help them get a job. What I think we need to look at is how can the workforce be paid for that work? You're basically those who aren't (indiscernible) you're doing work for us for free that we could pay you for, and we would like to pay you for it, so all you need to do is sign up to be an EN because beneficiaries want to use the workforce system to find a job.

> We pay employment networks in this case the workforce One-Stops for milestones. We're going to talk about that in a minute. For those who aren't already employment networks, you may not know that we in our regs that were effective last July 21st, we wrote in a section that allowed workforce systems to become ENs more easily than in the past. We deemed them eligible or qualified to be an employment network, so you don't have to prove that you have qualifications to provide employment services, and also we're waiving some of the insurance requirements to make it easier for the workforce One-Stop system to become ENs.

> The ultimate goal of the whole system is reduce reliance on benefits, not necessarily to kick people off the roles. We want people to work, to work some, at least part-time, and to earn money and take care of themselves so they can't completely take care of themselves we'll supply the additional resources through our programs. So they don't necessarily -- we want to increase the self sufficiency and improve the quality of life. That's the real goal of the program and we think we're seeing that. We're seeing more ENs come in. We're seeing more beneficiaries using their tickets, so with that I will hand it back to Emily, and I will be around to answer questions right after Felix talks.

(EmilyMalsch) Great. Felix, as I mentioned Felix with Maximus, he will walk you through quick the milestone payments that are available to employment network if they choose this option. If you want to go ahead and give us a quick overview of the payments available.

(Felix Stump) Thank you very much, Emily. Dan did a great job I think of couching this discussion in terms of why this is important for One-Stops. I will just go over briefly what payments are in store. Mentioned the SSA wants to pay you all for doing the work that you're already doing, and these are the payments he is talking about. First of all, they're all under the new regulations. We've got as soon as that beneficiary earns at least half of the trial work amount, this year, that's 350-dollars in one calendar month, that's the first of the phase 1 milestones. The milestone payments are broken into two phases, phase 1, phase 2. This was one of the major changes to the new regulations really to provide kind of to allow for the fact that in most cases for beneficiary to go back to work it is not a rapid jump back to full time high paying employment. It is a transition that can take a significant amount of time and it often times starts with part-time work. The first phase 1 of the milestone payments really does allow for a significant amount of revenue for the EN involved, you the One-Stop, for the achievement of part-time work in most cases for beneficiaries, so once they work at half the level of trial work amount, which is 350 for one month, that payment to you, that phase 1 number one payment is $1,211 regardless of whether or not the beneficiary is collecting SSDI, SSI or both. Phase 2 is achieved once the beneficiary earns over the trial work level amount of $700 for 2009, over trial work level amount for three months with a caveat being that those three months need to be within one six-month period. Now, it is cumulative meaning that that first month that you turned in for a milestone payment, the requirement was only that they earned over 350. If they happen to earn over 700 over the trial work level, you can use that one month to count towards the three you need within one six-month period. As soon as you achieve that you submit a request for payment, get another $1,211. Similar for phase 1 milestone three, the requirement for that milestone is six months of earnings over the trial work level amount. Those six months need to take place within one twelve-month window, and it is cumulative, so it includes the previous three months you used for milestone 2. Another payment of $1,211 rounding it out to milestone 4 as soon as they have nine months of earnings, over the trial work level amount, within one eighteen-month period it is another $1,211 for a total of potential earnings and just the phase 1 of the milestone payments of $4,844 for one beneficiary. This is still work not yet over SGA. A couple of changes to note, if you have been considering working with the program, but haven’t based on the old regulations, this is a change in the milestone structure significantly in that it used to be the first couple milestones really weren't all that much. They were 200 or $300 here or maybe 400 or 500. Under the new regulations you really can see a significant amount of revenue just under$5,000 within the first nine months for work that's not even yet over SG&A. So once you conclude the phase 1, move over to phase 2 of the milestone payments the next slide.

> Phase 2, the point that really divides these is that once you collected all of those phase 1 milestones, the requirement of earnings that the beneficiary needs to show rachets up a notch. For this phase they need to earn over SG&A. They're still collecting a cash benefit, so here is where it starts to diverge a little bit depending on whether or not your beneficiary is collecting SSDI or SSI. If they're collecting SSDI, you have up to 11 months available, and each one of those phase 2 months is a month that they earn over SG&A $980 this year for the non-blind or 1640 for blind. As soon as they have one month over SG&A, you can send in that request for your phase 1, I am sorry, phase 2 milestone one payment, SSDI, that payment is going to be to you $353. Moving forward for every month they earn over SGA, you will get phase 2 milestone payment up to 11. Each payment will be for $363 for s SSDI client for a total of phase 2 payments $3,993.

> For SSI clients used to be under the old regs that you didn't really stand to earn nearly as much revenue, about 60% of the total for SSI as you did SSDI. That is a major change made under the new regs. Urn the new ticket it is just about even. The way they do that, the individual payments are lower. It is $207 for every month over SG&A instead of the 363. However, you have up to 18 of them available. Bringing the total available cash to you roughly or actually $3,726. So that so far you have gotten phase 1 payments, just under $5,000, where they really hadn't even gone over SG&A yet. You moved into phase 2 where their earnings went over SG&A, but instead of the work incentives they might be taking advantage of, they maintained some cash benefit, not off the roles yet. You brought in another either 37 or $3,900 for a total earnings potential for just milestone payments of $8,800, for someone who is on SSDI or $8,500 or someone on SSI. Once you're through the phased or really at any point in the phase 1 or phase 2 as soon as they zero out their cash benefits, that's when you move into the outcome payment portion of the schedule.

> The outcome payments work almost exactly like the phase 2 did. It is the same dollar amount. The only difference is that now for each month they have zero cash benefit, you will get 363 for a month for SSDI and for 207 per month for SSI, so really in term of the revenue stream coming in, if the worker transitions from over SG&A work to zero cash benefit smoothly, you will really see no difference in revenue coming into you regularly each month. It will still be the 363 per month or 207 per month depending on the SSDI or SSI. And the difference being in how many of these months you had available for an SSDI client, have you up to 36 months at the higher payment amount for SSI, you have up to 60 months at the higher payment amount for a total of $13,000 or $12,400 for SSDI and SSI respectively. For the total payment amount and here is the value of the ticket that Dan mentioned, for an SSDI client, $21,905. For an SSI client, $20,900. So how do you get these payments?

> On the next slide we'll go into the process for requesting payment.

(Ray Cebula)Felix, if I can interrupt you for a second. Some folks who are listening in over their computers are having a bit of a trouble hearing us. If you could speak a little louder, that would be helpful.