Sean Retraining Project

PERHAPS NO FEDERAL PROGRAM PROVIDES more damning testimony of the law of unintended consequences, and the grotesque mockery that can be made of our best intentions, than the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. What began in 1973 as a modest effort to aid the aged, blind, and physically disabled has today become the Pandora's box of federal bureaucracies. Each look inside releases a new apparition: 250,000 drug addicts and alcoholics have used it to feed their habits, and more than 770,000 children qualify because they can't participate in 'age-appropriate activities.' Tens of thousands of county and city prisoners may be receiving their SSI checks behind bars right now. It's not at all surprising to learn that a program carrying an $ 8 billion annual price tag in 1980 today tops out at more than $ 25 billion and claims more than 6 million beneficiaries.

• Sean Retraining Project Management

What is surprising is the $ 33 million the federal government has spent trying to recruit even more beneficiaries to SSI's already exploding rolls. In 1990, the government began funding ' Outreach Demonstration Projects' - crusades to 'maximize the rate of participation among those eligible to receive benefits.' The Social Security Administration 'has continually tried to increase the rate of participation,' according to a nearly 1,000-page review of the projects, 'and to overcome those factors that might prevent or discourage participation.'

Why we’re doing this project. A utomation and artificial intelligence are rapidly changing the way we live. Technology that once lived on the pages of science-fiction novels is now redefining our everyday lives, from how we buy our groceries to how we park our cars.

To that end, organizations that were awarded outreach grants spent tax dollars on mass mailings, billboards, handouts, radio and television spots, newspaper ads, 'Benefit Fairs,' mobile SSI sign-up units, door-to-door canvassing, booths at state fairs and Native American gatherings, and even an SSI rap song. But giving money away isn't as easy as it sounds, particularly when the government is involved.

Among the barriers SSI's emissaries had to overcome were 'the stigma of receiving public assistance,' a 'mistrust of government programs,' and 'a reluctance to admit or accept disability as a permanent condition.' And there was, as well, the appalling incompetence with which grantees went about their work. One South Dakota grantee who had scant success signing up new beneficiaries bemoaned the attitudes of those with whom he came into contact: 'One major barrier to the success of the program appears to have been 'Midwest Pride' - the belief in the importance of earning one's own keep and looking down upon financial assistance.

Sean Retraining Project Management

Which seems to have been a large factor in the immunity of Bon Hornroe County residents, in particular, to outreach efforts. Despite their efforts, outreach staff reported being unable to dissuade beliefs that SSI is a welfare program.' Grantees had greater diffculties dealing with American Indians in New Mexico. Besides encountering resistance from tribal elders, who wanted to ' deal directly with the federal government, as one nation to another, rather than through the grantee,' SSI outreachers ran into another barrier - ' Navajo time.' 'Navajo time lacks the sense of urgency that characterizes the mainstream U. Culture,' says the report. 'People don't worry about such things as clocks and calendars, making appointments, reading mail when it comes, or following through on things within any set timeframe.

As a result, the grantee had some diffculties in getting tribal members to attend meetings to discuss the outreach.' In Arizona, obviously ineligible Native Americans were processed nonetheless because outreach workers 'did not want them to hear 'no' from the 'white man' once again.' Plans to drive an SSI mobile unit through rough neighborhoods around East St. Louis, Ill., flushing potential SSI beneficiaries cut with bullhorns, also proved vexing. 'The conditions inside the van proved uncomfortable for taking more than one application at a time, and even then the circumstances were less than ideal,' says the report. The van was later sold, a smaller transport vehicle leased, and the proceeds from the sale used to lengthen the outreach. Two canvassers for a government grantee in New Orleans were shot - neither fatally - and others were shunned by residents fearful they were rent-hiking spies of the local housing authority.

According to the report, the $ 170,000 project foundered because 'infighting between Tenants Associations made it impossible for the tenants of one housing project to go into another project to conduct outreach efforts.' Attempts by a California grantee to troll for beneficiaries in Orange County's Cambodian and Vietnamese communities were foiled by shady middlemen (sometimes euphemistically called 'community helpers') who get a tidy sum signing immigrants up for benefits, serving as translators, and coaching immigrants on how to fake disabilities. And successfully, too. Middlemen have an 80 percent success rate at winning SSI awards; much better than the 30 percent batting average of the local Social Security offce. Drug gangs menaced door-to-door canvassers, and sloppy translations meant culturally-correct printed materials were six months late in arriving.

Then there was this problem: At least 60 percent of Cambodian households already have one or more members on SSI. A drive to recruit the homeless in the Northeast went awry over the question of whether substance abuse alone could serve as grounds for a disability, or if a second condition (like cirrhosis of the liver or crackinduced psychosis) was required.

Just when that issue was resolved - no second condition was necessary - the project was hit with an Unfair Labor Practices grievance filed by workers athe local Social Security field offce. They objected to anyone other than qualified professionals like themselves taking SSI applications. Hurricane Andrew intervened in another starcrossed outreach effort, this one to sign up people with AIDS, blowing away the houses of two project staffers and scattering potential ben eficiaries to the wind.

In addition, because 'peer conselors' on the project were all required to be HIV-positive, the grantee got bogged down continually replacing and retraining the staff as it fell ill. Grambling State Univenfity, backed by a $ 175,000 outreach grant, succeeded in signing up only four people for SSI - which works out to roughly $ 43,750 per sign-up!

Officials at the Social Security Administration reported having trouble reaching the project director, who, it turns out, 'had been terminated from the University' and was 'facing criminal charges for misappropriating University and grant funds.' When all was said and done - and $ 33 million spent - these crusades had negligible effect on SSI rolls. 'Among applicants and awardees throughout the nation during the project perod, the outreach projects contributed only 0.30 percertt and 0.27 percent respectively,' according to the study. One doesn't know whether to be saddened or relieved.