- Hello, everyone.
Welcome to this week's Summertime Stories edition
from Disability Rights Texas.
Today we have a double header.
We will be talking about client success stories
from two different DRTx teams.
I am Victoria, and I'm here today with my colleague, Will.
- Hello, everyone.
- Will is an advocate on our Client Assistance Program team,
or CAP team, for short, and he's going to talk
about a client we've helped through
that program in a few moments.
But first I am going to share a client
success story from my team, which is the PABSS team.
I'm an advocate on the PABSS team.
PABSS stands for Protection and Advocacy
for Beneficiaries of Social Security.
This client's case falls under
the Disability Rights Texas priority
that assists individuals with disabilities
in becoming competitively employed.
Competitive employment is work performed
by a person with a disability
in an integrated setting, with wages at least
minimum wage or higher, and at a rate comparable
to people without disabilities performing the same work.
We were contacted by a woman who was receiving
Social Security Disability Insurance, or SSDI,
and her cash benefits had stopped
when she had gone to work.
She was also notified that Social Security
had overpaid her $10,000 in benefits.
She was extremely concerned because
she did not have $10,000 to repay to Social Security,
and she wasn't able to work full-time.
She was only able to work part-time
because of her disability, and her family
was depending on her SSDI income.
This concern caused her to stop working.
When she contacted us, we investigated her overpayment
and work activity, and found that there were
work incentives and rules that Social Security
had not taken into consideration.
We assisted her in obtaining the necessary
documentation to submit to Social Security.
And Social Security found that her work activity
was not substantial after the work incentives
and additional information was applied.
So they were able to reinstate her benefits
and it eliminated the overpayment.
Our PABSS team advocate then met with her
to review additional information about
Social Security work incentives
and how benefits are impacted by work,
so that she could make a more informed decision
about her employment goals moving forward.
With this information, she decided that
she would continue working, and she has since
gone back to working part-time in her community.
This is just one example of one of the many people
we're able to assist each year through our PABSS program.
And now, I'll turn it over to Will.
- Thanks, Victoria.
Again, I'm Will Burley.
I'm a Client Assistance Program
advocate, or a CAP advocate.
Our team helps people who are applying for
or receiving benefits from the
Texas Workforce Solutions Vocational
Rehabilitation Services, or TWS.
And we also help people who are receiving
services from Independent Living Centers
that are receiving federal funds.
So, one of the cases that
our team helped with, a client of ours was working
with their Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor
for a number of years, and the counselor
had helped this client go through training
so he could become successfully employed.
The client got through the training,
and started his job search, and he
found his job rather quickly.
And he was so excited.
Then, when he told his counselor
what tools he needed for his type of employment,
that's where the problems came in,
and that's how CAP got involved.
So our advocate worked with the client
and the vocational counselor to develop
a communication strategy, because we found
that most times, problems arise when
there's a lack of communication,
so we helped develop a plan
so they can learn to work with each other,
even without CAP in the future.
So, once that was established,
the CAP advocate worked with the counselor,
to really explain what the client needed,
the tools he needed for his work.
So the counselor did eventually
get the tools needed, and that client
is successfully working today.
And that's just one example of how CAP
can help people all over the state.
We thank you for being with us today.
And we hope you come back next week,
for the next in our series.
Thank you.