>> Ray Cebula: Okay, good afternoon everybody. This is Ray Cebula from Cornell University's Employment and Disability Institute and I want to welcome you to today's webinar. We have a lot of great information for you today and three wonderful area work incentive coordinators who are going to share their experience and information with you. We're going to be talking about preventing and managing overpayments today and we'll talk a little bit about the Ticket to Work and some other information that people need to hear if they are about to begin working but before we get to our speakers, we've got some information for you concerning the technology that you're using today. You should have a webinar console up in the upper right hand corner of your computer screen. You've been connected today through the speaker and microphones in your computer. If for any reason during today's presentation you're unable to hear us through the speakers in your computer, you can access us by using the telephone. In order to do that you need to click on the audio box, just click on the plus sign, open that audio box and it will give you today's call-in information. I will also show that to you in just a minute. One of the important things about today's webinar is your questions, you know, we want to hear from you, you want to hear what you know, what you want to know, and in order to present the question click on the plus sign next to the word "Questions" in your webinar console. It will open up this box, you'll be able to type your question in, hit send and Jamie [assumed spelling] is going to be fielding our questions today. Now there are lots of people listening to today's webinar so the chances of us answering all of your questions is not very likely. However, please know that if we do not get to your specific question, we will give you some information as to where you can get an answer to your specific situation. Now our webinars are -- they're, we strive to make these webinars accessible to as many people as possible, in fact to everybody, that's our goal. We want everybody to be able to participate. So I want you to do me a favor, if you do have any issues with today's webinar I want you to let us know. If you're having issues seeing, reading, hearing, making any of this accessible, please let us know. And more important than letting me know that you're having a problem, I'd like to know if you know of a solution, you know, if you know of a solution to the issues that you're having we can then investigate that and make sure that we make some improvements to our product. Now our toll free number for today is 1-877-739-5903, so if you are using a telephone that's the number that you will want to dial, 877-739-5903. You will be asked for an access code, that access code is 180106670. The closed captioning for today's session is available at www.captionedtext.com/client/event.aspx? customerid=834&eventid=1897483 and the web powerpoint accessible PDF and text are oh, are located in the url that you received. We will also be archiving the session within about a week and you will be able to download that and I understand that you can even download the archives to your mp3 players now. Our webinar presentation transcript, again, I said would be available in about a week, well it says 2 weeks here, but we're going to put a little pressure on Mike and that can be found at www.ilr.cornell.edu/edi/m-wise-webinars.cmf and the webinar question and answers, if you do not have access to the webinar console or cannot use that, you could potentially use the chat box or send your questions to Jamie via email at chooseworkquestions@gmail.com and any time after today's webinar if you have questions you can certainly email them to us at support@chooseworkttw.net. Now as I said, we have some great folks with us today. We have Ed Rana [assumed spelling] who is a work incentive, an area work incentive coordinator. These folks are very important to those of us who are involved with social security and the return to work because they are the substantive experts on the return to work process. So we look to them a lot for information and clarification. We have Crystal Orrs [assumed spelling] another AWIC, we use those initials A-W-I-C when we talk about these folks and Eric Skidmore [assumed spelling] They'll all be, who's from the Office of Income Supports Programs, we have, you know, lots of good information that they're going to be sharing with us and as I introduce them I'll introduce their topic and let them tell you a bit about themselves as well. At the end of the session I'm going to provide you with some other resources that you might want to use to get answers to your personal questions. Just a hint, Jamie is not going to be taking questions for the group of hundreds of people that deal with your personal issues because this isn't the place to talk about those issues, but we do want to have your general questions for discussion. Now what can you expect from today's presentation? We're going to be providing you with some information on the Ticket to Work and the work incentives that are available to you should you choose to begin that journey to work, very, very important tools that social security provides to assist you with that journey. We're going to talk about answers to frequently asked questions and there are all kinds of questions people have when they want to begin work and we pretty much are going to address the reality of the situation and the myths that are out there. Where can you find more information? We'll let you know where you can talk with somebody about your particular situation. Again, today we're talking in generalities, we're talking about how the program works, how it impacts you and where you are in your journey to work is going to be a matter for you to discuss with somebody at the resources that we'll be providing. We've got a great success story to share with you about a young woman who actually used her Ticket to Work and was a success story and has returned to work and is having a great life. She's a real inspiration to us all. And information on what to do if you end up in an overpayment situation. Now that happens when people return to work, they can end up in an overpayment situation but more importantly, for those of you who are about to begin your journey to work, we want you to know how to avoid that situation or avoid it as much as possible. So our AWICS are going to share that information with you. Now why does anybody want to go back to work? The first answer here is real easy - to earn more income. You know social security benefits are not providing people with a great standard of living, in fact on the SSI side, benefits are still paid at below the poverty level. Earning more income will help you with the rest of the goals here about why choosing work. Gaining independence - the more money you have the more independence you will have, not only independence to do what you want, to live where you want but independence from federal agencies and state agencies that you may be reporting to on a regular basis. Learning new skills - everybody learns something every day, you know, that's my motto. As soon as I learn my new thing for the day I turn off my computer and my day is over, but learning new skills. Do you need to do that? Well, the Ticket to Work can help you do that. Do you need to relearn skills that you had and because of your disability may have to do certain parts of your former job in a new way? The Ticket to Work can help you do that. And the last one here - meeting new people. Work allows you to get out into society and participate. You know, I, I, I always tell the story on this one that I met my spouse at work so needless to say work has changed my life significantly. You know, Jamie is a bud, she helps see me with this webinars all the time. I met her through work, you know. Work is a very valuable thing so I think that when those of us who are encouraging you to go back to work, we're doing that not because we want you to have more money because that's the obvious thing. What we want is for your entire well-being to change and improve. Now we're going to get over to Megan's story and Megan is our success story today. In 2008 Megan had a major depressive episode and had to turn to disability benefits to keep herself financially stable. But what she decided to do was use her Ticket to Work and now she is enjoying life, as you'll see, she has a great puppy and she has been able now to return to her, one of her passions, competitive ballroom dancing and I want Mike to cue up that video for you and Megan will tell us her own story. So take it away Mike.

[ Silence in the audio ]

[ Music ]

>> I believe it was around January of 2008 I kind of got sick and I took another position and from that position I ended up getting fired and I had a mental breakdown so my disability is a mental illness and it took a lot of time for me to get everything back together. I ended up actually having to file bankruptcy. It was really great for me that I was introduced to the disability program and after so many months in the disability program you can get a Ticket to Work and then that will help you actually get back into working but it also allows you to get medical assistance which helps you, for me, to be able to see a psychiatrist and doctors and get my medicine [inaudible] Staying at home is not as fun as it looks but also it's not me, I'm 27, so I don't want to be at home my whole life and I have a lot of things to do, so that really made me want to get back to work because that's what I should be doing, that's what I want to be doing. First thing that I received in the mail was my Ticket to Work and with that it included some websites and pamphlets about what the program was and places you could go and people you could give your tickets to and so I found actually Transcend [assumed spelling] and I called them.

>> Hi Megan [inaudible] How're you doing today?

>> I'm doing pretty good.

>> Good [inaudible]

>> Megan came to Transcend about a year ago. She was seeking a job in the IT, DNA Synthesis field. She knew exactly what she wanted to do and she worked with our employment counselor in developing her resume, fine-tuning her interview skills, identifying employers and after only a few months she was able to obtain employment, actually it's a temporary agent, doing what she wanted to do.

>> One of the big problems or concerns that I had was would I lose my disability benefit if I started working and then I couldn't continue to work and then I would have to start all over again.

>> So at that point she connected with me for benefits counseling and I was able to walk her through what, how her benefits would be affected by that work. She received social security disability insurance so she was happy to learn that she had what are called trial work period months and she was able for 9 months to work at a full time position and not have any decrease in her benefits, she still received full benefits. After those 9 months were over, she had an additional 3 months, called her grace period months, and after those months are over she has an additional 3 years where she's, her disability check will only be suspended based on her earnings and if she's not able to keep the job, she can go, return to her social security disability benefits.

>> It made me feel supported that I could do it and I could try and if it didn't work I could come back but I could keep trying. The job that I do is a document control specialist and the easiest way to explain that is it's part librarian so people return things to me and I check them out. It's part teacher because when they return things to me I check it to make sure that it's correct and if it's not I ask for them to redo it.

>> What made Megan a success in her job search first and foremost was her willingness to go back to work and our job after that really is how can we support her to make that happen.

>> I would classify Megan as a success story in that she was able to do what she wanted to do where she is continuing to work now and she's earning enough that she's going to be working her way off of the disability benefits. She's happy in what she's doing and as long as she's happy we're very happy for her.

>> The impact has been great. I have a year left to pay off my car and then it's mine forever and kind of get my life back under control. I'm looking to move out on my own and just making a lot of good choices that are good for me and just moving forward. [Music]

>> One of the biggest things I like to do is I like to competitive ballroom dance and also when I got into my disability again the [inaudible] so that wasn't as fun for me as it could have been. And so now it's getting more fun and I'm enjoying it, I like the costumes, so that's a big thing that I do. [Music]

>> And now I have a lot of focus. I'm not going to say that sometimes I don't fall back into the abyss but now I know and I've received the tools from Transcend, from myself and from the people that they've put me in contact with to pull myself up and to keep going from, I don't think that I'll ever not fall back but I don't believe that I will never keep moving forward. This is a program that can help anyone no matter what your disability and no matter who you are or where you live. This is something that can help you move forward and to continue on with your life.

[ Music ]

[ Silence on the audio ]

>> Ray Cebula: Okay. I want to thank Megan for sharing her story. She is truly inspirational and, as you can see, can dance a mean cha-cha or whatever she was doing there. Now we're going to get into some of today's substance and I want to introduce Ed Rana who is an area work incentive coordinator or AWIC as we call them, and he'll talk to us about the Ticket to Work and some of the work incentives. Take it away Ed.

[ Silence ]

>> Ray Cebula: Okay, Ed we're not hearing you. Mike can you check to see if we can get Ed reconnected?

>> Mike: Hi Ed, if you could hit star 6 that may take care of it for you.

>> Ed Rana: How's this.

>> Ray Cebula: That's great Ed, you're with us.

>> Ed Rana: Okay, good, thank you. [Laughter] We'll get it all figured out.

>> Ray Cebula: We will.

>> Ed Rana: Okay. Well thank you Ray for the introduction. As Ray said I am an area work incentives coordinator and I do work in the San Francisco region in northern California. Just a little bit of a background, I have a little over 38 years with Social Security and for the last 14 1/2 years I've been working in the work incentive programs as a task specialist and now as an area work incentives coordinator. And what I'm going to talk a little bit about today are the Ticket to Work and work incentive provisions in a general sense. If we were to try to cover everything that's in those 2 programs we could be on here for a long, long time, so we'll get some general information out to everyone. I do want to point out that our work incentives are also known as employment supports and they do support an individual's efforts to return to work. With employment supports an individual can make the attempt to return to work and can, for the most part, rely on the continuation of benefits and medical insurance while doing so. Now when I've done presentations before, many people have asked me why Social Security puts so much emphasis on return to work issues when the fact of disability under social security has an inability to work component and that's working at a substantial level. But we know that individuals are better off working and so we want to make it possible for people to try to work and hopefully if they try they will be successful and eventually will not need the assistance of our programs. Okay, next slide Ray. Okay, so when you're ready to work how do you start the process? It is really important to plan your return to work. Gathering information and the resources that are available is key to planning the steps that you need to take in your journey from not working to employment and the Ticket to Work program as well as the social security work incentives can help you make the journey maybe a little bit smoother than it might be if you tried to do it just on your own. Next slide. Now because the process can be daunting one of the very first steps in planning is to find someone to assist you and building your employment team is the best way to begin and there are a number of options that are available to you but one of the most important options is to connect with an expert at our Ticker to Work helpline and the numbers are on the slide there. The Ticket to Work helpline agents can direct you to resources that could make the process easier and you can also check out the Ticket to Work website and that is also on the slide there, the www.choosework.net and there you can find out more about the Ticket to Work program, check out the blogs that are shared there and also watch some of the success story videos that we have available. They're always very encouraging and I'd suggest that that's a very good step to take. Okay, the next slide. Now sometimes the best approach is more hands on where you can get direction and encouragement from agencies that can assess your knowledge, your skills and your abilities and then work with you in the best approach for you to take to return to work. So building your employment team is the best way to begin and you have a couple of options there. You can find an employment network or an EN or a state vocational rehabilitation agency that suits your needs and when you check out the website you can get the information on what ENs or VR agencies are available to you in your area. And then the important thing is to stay connected with your employment team [inaudible] for your work options. Sometimes you might take a, a, a step in one direction that doesn't seem to work, you can always go back to your employment team and let them know what's happened and maybe they can direct you in a different approach that will make things a little more successful. Next slide. So let's look at Ticket to Work and work incentives just a little bit more. Your Ticket to Work is not just a piece of paper that is mailed to you. It can be a key to your future if you really want to return to work or if you want to go to work for the very first time. Next slide. So why do we want you to use Ticket to Work? Well, let's look at some of the reasons and you'll, and you'll see that using the Ticket to Work program could be a real advantage to you in your approach to return to work. So if you are ready to earn more money then using Ticket to Work and work incentives can help you improve your earnings potential by getting training or going to school and getting connected with various employers in, in the workforce. If you want, if you have the need for personal fulfillment that comes from working the Ticket to Work program can provide the assurance and stability you need to feel confident while you pursue employment and that's really important because if, if you're not confident, if you start falling back and, and get a little hesitant about doing things that may make it a lot more difficult to continue in your pursuit of employment. If you want to be able to get benefits back if your job does not work out because of your disability, and we all ha, we all know that those situations do arise, well what's important is that with Ticket to Work and work incentives we can put you back on the fast track and to getting benefits by using work incentives such as the extended period of eligibility or the expedited reinstatement supports. And then if you find that you're overwhelmed and don't know where to turn, Take a Tour can connect you with the people and the resources and the services you need to develop a work plan. Next slide. Now obviously the goal of Ticket to Work is to assist you in your preparations to return to work, to keep benefits going while you attempt to work, to maintain your health insurance benefits for a period of time once benefits stop and, if needed, allow you to return to benefits status as easily as possible if your condition prevents you from continuing work. The Ticket to Work program is free but it is voluntary. You decide if you want to use the program but you have to make it work, you have to take the steps to get started, to go to work to earn a living to become self-sufficient. Now Ticket to Work is for those individuals who are receiving social security or SSI disability benefits who are between the ages of 18 and 64, so that's our eligibility period. And we have lots of people that are in that, in that range, in fact, I deal with a number who are in their sixties who are trying to return to work and that's a good thing to see. And the next slide. Now the Ticket to Work program and work incentives are, are not the same thing. The Ticket to Work program gives you an opportunity to take advantage of the work programs that Social Security has and those are our work incentives and these are special considerations that allow you to keep some of your cash benefits and your health insurance while you work toward successful and gainful employment. But it is important to understand that because Social Security administers 2 separate disability programs there are also distinct work incentives applicable to each of those programs and sometimes this could be a little bit confusing but taking advantage of your employment team or by contacting your local -- Social Security Office, we can help you to understand which work incentives apply to you based on the type of disability benefits you get, whether it's SSDI or SSI or both. In addition there are publications available to help explain work incentives and probably the best of these is the red book, Unemployment Supports and Disability Programs. This is available through your local Social Security Office or by going online to the Social Security website which is www.socialsecurity.gov and requesting the publication and there are a lot of other publications that can assist you in, in your efforts to return to work. Next slide. So in summary let me just say that the Ticket to Work is an excellent program to take advantage of. Again it is for those individuals ages 18 to 64 who receive disability benefits, remember that. Again, the program is voluntary and you have to choose to participate. Just because you get a ticket mailed to you doesn't mean that you're involved with the program. That gives you the opportunity to take advantage of what the Ticket to Work program has available. Ticket to Work provides additional benefits while you plan your employment. You get to choose the employment team that best suits you and then you can work with that team and with Social Security in using the appropriate employment supports and as an additional benefit of the Ticket to Work program, Social Security will postpone your continuing disability review if it comes due after you have signed your ticket and made timely progress towards your work goals. So there's a lot available to you by taking advantage of Ticket to Work and our work incentives and we hope that everyone who has the desire to work will take advantage of those. It's back to you Ray.

>> Ray Cebula: Okay, thank you very much Ed. Great programs, great information and it's very clear that everybody involved, Social Security, the employment networks and the VR agencies, are looking to help people succeed in their journey back to work. So we're going to change topics a bit and we're going to call on Crystal Orrs who is another area work incentive coordinator or a AWIC, and she'll tell us where she's from and she's going to talk about preventing and managing overpayments. Crystal take it away.

>> Cyrstal Ors: Thank you Ray. Are you able to hear me?

>> Ray Cebula: I certainly am.

>> Cyrstal Ors: I'm really glad to hear that and thank you Ed.

>> Ray Cebula: Me too [laughter]

>> Crystal Orr: [Laughter] I, I know you gave everybody my name and I'll do it one more time. My name is Crystal and I am greeting all of you today from sunny Oklahoma, so we've moved away from Ed in California and I also have been with Social Security for a few years but not quite as many as Ed. I think I've been with the agency now about 18 years and during the time that I've been with Social Security I've done a lot of the jobs that happen in a Social Security office so I'm one of the people that when you apply for social security benefits you talk to somebody at Social Security, it would have been somebody like me or if you call to a Social Security office or have gone in you might have talked to somebody like me, and a lot of the people that I talk to when they visit the Social Security and wanted to talk about work, one of the first things they say is I don't want to get overpaid, I don't want to have a problem with Social Security. So what we want to do today is talk a little bit about what an overpayment is and what causes them so we would know how to avoid them and then if we do have an overpayment situation what we could do to deal with it so we don't have to feel quite so anxious about it. Let's go to the next slide. All right, this is what an overpayment actually is, is Social Security each month has to determine how much that we're going to pay each one of our beneficiaries and once we've released that money if we find out later that the amount that we calculated and paid out was incorrect and actually we should have paid a littler amount that creates an overpayment. The amount of the overpayment is the difference between what we actually paid and the benefit amount that should have been due. Go ahead and go to the next slide. We also have a special situation for our Social Security Disability Insurance beneficiaries which is the SSDI program. In that program not only does a person who works and pays into Social Security and becomes disabled sometimes get a check, but there are also times that their family members, often children, sometimes spouses often can get a check and if those individuals are getting a check in their household because of their relationship to you, especially when work activity is involved, if we figure out that we've paid you too much we might have also have paid your other family members too much. So the big important thing to remember to avoid overpayment for you and your family members in the Social Security Disability Insurance program is to make sure that you always report to Social Security any time you start working, anytime you stop working and anytime you change the kind of work you're doing, the hours that you're working or the rate of pay that you're getting for that work and that way we'll be able to make adjustments to your check and to your family members' checks so that we don't pay you more than we were supposed to pay you and end up talking to you later about an overpayment. Now if any of you have ever spent time in a classroom you'll know that a teacher, when they really want you to remember something because it's going to be on the test, they'll repeat it over and over again and so that very last thing I said about always reporting when you start work, stop work or change your hours or rate of pay, that is so important I'm probably going to say it over and over again. Not because I think that you didn't hear me the first time but I'm really sure if we say it over and over we won't forget. Okay, next slide. Now we're moving away from the disability insurance payments and looking at Supplemental Security Income or SSI payments. Because SSI is a program that allows us to pay people based on financial need, generally speaking the more income you have, like from work, the less your social security payment will be and what we know is that when you work and your SSI payments go down, they don't actually go down dollar for dollar but [inaudible] you're actually able to end up with more in a month when you include your lower SSI payment and your earnings than you would if you weren't earning at all but in fact when you have higher income your SSI payment will go down and so that's one of the ways that working can affect your SSI check. Okay, next slide. There we go. Because SSI is a different program than our disability insurance program, there are other things besides your income that can also affect your eligibility for your check and the amount of your check and so those things are also things that can end up causing an overpayment if Social Security is not aware of those situations before we actually release the checks. Besides your income, another thing that Social Security needs to know about is resources and our slide tells us that resources are things like bank accounts and vehicles. We'll talk a little bit about those in just a minute and I'm going to jump down to the bottom of the slide, if you're following the slide, because the other thing that's not really related to work that can affect SSI payments and can cause overpayment is a change in your living arrangement. In SSI we need to know where you're living and who's living with you when we determine your payment amount so anytime those things change we need to know about it also so we don't overpay you. But now if it has to do with work, guess what, I'm going to say it again, when you start or stop working or if you change your hours or rate of pay Social Security needs to know because it can affect your check amount and the other thing that's really important for SSI when you're working is at the beginning of each month you want to make sure that you report to Social Security the exact amount of earnings that you had at the end of the month that just finished and that way social security has an opportunity to get that information and adjust your check amount before [inaudible] release and payment that is really too high and would result in an overpayment. Okay, next slide. Because I know that so many people are concerned about working and how it might cause an overpayment I wanted to tell you exactly how work can sometimes cause an overpayment. One way it can happen is that you told Social Security you were working but you ended up earning more than you actually expected to earn and that can sometimes happen if you pick up an extra shift or work some overtime or maybe cover for someone else and so in those ways you might have estimated something less than you actually made and we would want to make sure to let Social Security know. That would be letting us know about a change in hours or in a rate of pay. The other way that work can cause an overpayment is you go to work but you don't report it to Social Security and Social Security finds out later and Social Security has a lot of interfaces with other agencies and other institutions and so we usually do find out about work but sometimes it's after we've already released several checks that were in the wrong amount and so that is one way that you can end up being overpaid. Another way that you can end up being overpaid is you get the information to Social Security but Social Security doesn't get that information into our mainframe before we certify the check to go through Treasury to get to you and that also can happen. Social Security is a very large agency, I'm sure all of you have had that experience of talking to one person and then talking to another person and sometimes your information also goes from one person to another person and by the time it all gets into our computer and affects your check we've already released money that we should not have released. Okay, next slide. Now these are other things besides work that could cause overpayments and particularly right now I'm talking about SSI or Supplemental Security Income. The first one is that your income is more than you thought it was going to be and a lot of times when we think about income, we think about our earnings, but for SSI income is anything that's coming in to your household, so it could be a regular benefit from another agency or some kind of pension income that you might be getting. Income also might be irregular income, something that you only get once, like maybe you get lucky and win the lottery or maybe you go to a casino and have gambling winnings or maybe you have an, a little bit of rental or income that comes from royalties. So even income that's not regular when it comes into your home it can affect the SSI payment and if we find out about it after it happens that can result in an overpayment. Okay you can [inaudible] The other thing that can happen, and we kind of touched on this earlier, is that your living situation changes. In SSI, when we compute SSI payments for people in the household we look at where they're living, what their responsibilities for the bills are and how many people are living in that place. Anytime where you live changes or who's living with you changes those are things that should be reported to Social Security so that we can make changes to the records before we release more money than we're supposed to. Okay, you can advance. Also for SSI we look at things we call resources and basically resources are, are cash, maybe like something that you would have in a savings account or maybe, I don't know, stashed in a coffee can or something like that, a, a nice safe place that you can keep cash but it can be other things that you own or that your name is on the title of that you could sell or convert into cash. Things that would be an example of a resource would be bank accounts, vehicles, property, stocks and bonds and for SSI payments there's a limit on how many of those resources, the amount that you can have, and still be eligible for checks. So anytime you acquire one of those new things or sell them or get rid of them in some way, letting Social Security know is another way that you can avoid that overpayment because not knowing about it can cause the overpayment. Okay, you can advance to the next slide. Now for both SSI and our SSDI, our disability insurance program, there are some other things that can, can result in an overpayment. One of them is a change in your marital status. For a lot of our benefits an individual being married can affect the payments and so anytime your marital status changes you'll want to let Social Security know so that they can let you know if it's going to affect anybody in your household or you. Okay, you can advance. Also if, particularly if Social Security decides that you're no longer disabled medically and you continue to receive benefits, then those benefits that were paid after we said that you were no longer disabled medically would be considered an overpayment. Okay you can advance to the next slide. If you don't report a change to Social Security and again you can either not report it at all or just not report early enough, that can result in an overpayment. Okay you can advance. And we talked again about Social Security gets information from several different locations, you and other agencies. If what we use to determine your benefit amount is either just not right or incomplete, we didn't have all of the information, that can result in us paying a benefit of the wrong amount and cause an overpayment. Next. And I'm kind of reiterating this because I know that this can be a confusion in, in the things that we do, but even if you report a time [inaudible] to Social Security and Social Security doesn't get that information into our system in time to adjust your benefit amount it's possible that we would end up paying you an amount that's too high. Now, Social Security has a responsibility to account for all the benefits that we pay and if we determine that we paid a benefit amount higher than we were supposed to then we have a responsibility to try to recover that amount and get it back. And being responsible for our accounting, the first thing that we do in that process is we let the person who we paid too much know that we paid them more than we were supposed to. You can move me to the next slide. The way that we do that is we send the person a letter and, and our social security mailings, regardless of what kind of benefit that you get, at the top on the left hand side of the letter it'll say Social Security Administration and then, if this has to do with an overpayment, it'll say Notice of Overpayment down below that and it's a letter telling you that you've been overpaid and letting you know that you have 30 days to pay us the whole amount back. That sometimes makes people very anxious and I want to tell you something really important about our overpayment notices and actually about all of our notices. When Social Security sends you a notice most of the notice is created by a computer and not actually an individual. So when a person receives the Social Security letter sometimes they feel just a little bit insulted or offended when there's a Notice of Overpayment and I want to let you know that nobody wrote that letter looking at your picture with you in mind and said anything to you that would be upsetting in any way. When you get an overpayment notice it doesn't mean that you did anything wrong, it doesn't mean that Social Security thinks you were cheating, it just means that we're having to account for benefits that we know that we paid over the amount that we were supposed to pay. The other important thing to know about social security letters being created by computer is that sometimes when they get all put together, this paragraph goes here and you go on this plank and this paragraph goes here, when you read it sometimes it feels like maybe something's out of order or maybe something is missing. So it's really important when you get a letter from Social Security, particularly an overpayment notice that you read the letter very carefully and if there's any part of it that you don't understand or that you don't think makes sense or maybe does not apply, be sure to contact Social Security for an explanation because as many of those letters of [inaudible] even though it may not make great sense to you when you first see it, I'll probably know exactly how those words got in that order and I'll be able to explain it to you or another employee at Social Security. Okay, next slide. Now the other thing that'll happen in this notice, if you're currently getting a social security benefit and your letter is going to let you know that if we don't get a full refund within that 30 days that we're going to start collecting money out of what we would normally pay you until Social Security is all paid back and it'll tell you what month that's first going to happen. That letter will also let you know that you have appeal rights. An appeal is basically disagreeing with Social Security so you have the opportunity to do that. You can also, your letter will let you know that you can have the overpayment reviewed to see if it should actually even be collected and it'll tell you in your letter how you can go about doing that and all of that language is in every single one of our overpayment notices. Another thing that always shows up in our overpayment notices is information that tells you if you think you need help with that, that you could get a representative or an attorney and I know some people read that and then think, oh my goodness, Social Security is suing me and I need to go get an attorney because this letter's talking about getting an attorney and I always want to set people at ease to know that you don't need an attorney. We're required to let you know that you can get help if you feel like you need help, but you can always start with social security just to get an explanation, that information in there is not in any way meant to overwhelm you or make you anxious. Okay, next slide. Now these are the things that you should do if you get an overpayment notice, and when you get an overpayment notice, I know a lot of us when we hear bad news, what we kind of like to do is just ignore it and hope it goes away, and although that works in some situations better than it does in others, almost always if you get an overpayment notice and ignore it, the problem actually becomes more difficult to solve. So anytime you get an overpayment notice you should immediately contact social security, and you actually have three avenues, or three roads that you can go down if you get an overpayment notice. And the first one I want to talk to you about is an appeal. An appeal, like I said earlier, is just agreeing with social security, so if you got your notice and you don't believe that you actually were overpaid, or the amount that it said you were overpaid in the letter doesn't sound right, that's not the amount you think you were overpaid, because if you were overpaid it wasn't that amount, then you can ask social security to reconsider it and appeal it and say that you disagree. And this is something that you want to do as soon as possible, because if you do it soon enough, social security will relook at that information and during the time that they do that, they will not take any collection action to start withholding money out of your benefits, so that's really important that you take that step right away. Okay, advance. If an appeal is not really the road that you want to go down because you don't disagree that you were overpaid and you don't disagree with that amount, you believe in fact that you were overpaid, but you think that you weren't at fault in causing that overpayment and you really can't afford to pay it back because it would cause a financial hardship for you, you can ask social security for what we call, a waiver. And if you do that, basically you're telling social security that you don't think you should be held responsible for paying that money back because you did what you were supposed to do, and you told us what you were supposed to tell us, and we still ended up paying you too much. If you ask for a waiver, social security might get, ask for more information from you to decide if we actually can give you a waiver, but while we're making that decision, again, we will not take any kind of collection action, so we won't withhold money from your benefits, and we won't keep sending you letters about you owing us money while we're making that decision. If we decide that we can waive your overpayment, then no one is required to pay it back and it's completely forgiven. Okay, you can advance. Then there's a third option. Let's say that you don't disagree with social security and you do think that you maybe have something to do with not getting the right amount of money because you didn't get the information there in time, or you can afford to pay it back but you really don't want social security to automatically start taking money out of your benefits at the rate that social security would pick, but you want to repay the money a little bit at a time out of your benefits, and so all at once within thirty days, then you can contact social security and ask them to allow you to repay at an amount that's more affordable for you, again, social security might ask for some information to determine what repayment amount they can accept, but once that payment plan is in place, then we don't continue to talk to you about the overpayment and send notices and make calls. One of the important things to know about repayment agreements is, even if your payments have stopped, and you're not getting the social security benefit anymore, that overpayment is still there and if you've made an arrangement to pay back a little bit at a time, then everything is just fine, but if you haven't made that arrangement, then it ends up that the federal government owes you some money, like maybe in a tax refund, and you owe social security money, that money will be withheld and paid back to social security and you won't get it, even if years have passed since the overpayment happened. So again, I'm repeating that you always want to contact social security immediately when you get an overpayment notice, and pick one of these avenues to go down, so that you can resolve that overpayment as quickly as possible, the problem doesn't get any bigger, and it doesn't resurface and surprise you sometime in the future. Okay, next slide. Okay, the other thing that can happen is if your, we talked about if you're really not sure what caused the overpayment even after you looked at the letter, you can contact social security, and if the person who first talks to you isn't able to give you an exact explanation of how that overpayment happened, it may be that social security has to actually obtain all of the information and get it in one place to review it and review it with you, and actually make out a worksheet to help figure out exactly how this overpayment occurred. If you need a more detailed explanation and ask for one from social security, again social security will stop doing any kind of collection or withholding or sending notices until we've had an opportunity to get all the information and give you a complete explanation. Okay, next slide. All right, if you have any questions about an overpayment notice, or anything that comes up with your overpayment, social security has a national, hotline, I want to say hotline, that's probably not exactly the word for it, but we have a national number that you can call to talk to a social security employee from seven A.M. to seven P.M. on weekdays that aren't holidays, and you'll talk to somebody somewhere in the United States who works for social security that has information from our mainframe, and most of the time they'll be able to give you the explanation that you need about your overpayment. If they're not able to completely satisfy all of your questions, they can help you get in touch with your local social security office who will probably have even more information about your case, they can set up an appointment for you to visit there, or a time for the office to call you. You can also go to socialsecurity.gov, like we had talked about earlier, a location and find a way to directly contact your local social security office, you can find a specific office, and you can find their location and their phone number and you can contact them directly to ask questions or to make an appointment to go in and have somebody explain all of that information to you. Okay, next slide. And we've actually already talked a little bit about tips for avoiding an overpayment, but specifically with work, since that's what we're talking about. We want to plan to return to work, we know that's going to be a reality in the future that we're going to have some wages, here are some tips that we can use to avoid an overpayment so that we don't ever have to get that letter and don't ever have to get that explanation. Okay, next slide. The first thing that you can do is learn all about those work incentives that apply to you, like Ed said earlier, so that you know what to expect in your checks, you know what to report to social security, and you know if there's information that you need to give in addition to that, to social security. Okay, next slide. The other thing that you'll want to make sure that you do is to report any event that could affect your benefits. Now, we talked a lot about events, and some of them were disability insurance events, and some of them were supplemental security or [inaudible] and it is easy to get a little bit confused about what exactly is it that you need to report about your benefit. When you first filed for your benefit, or when you were first awarded your benefit, you might've received a list of all the things that you needed to report if they occurred, because it might affect your benefit. If you don't have that list, maybe you didn't get one, or maybe you're not exactly sure where you put it, you can contact social security and request your reporting responsibilities, and that way you'll know exactly, for the kind of benefits that you receive, or that you're family member receives, what it is you need to let social security know about so that we'll know that we're paying you correctly. Okay, next slide. The other thing when it comes to working what we want to do is we that if we're working, we need to let social security know that we're working and how much we think that we're going to make, and we will let social security know when we stop working, but in your local area there will be away to report to social security exactly how much you did earn, because we're going to pay you based on an estimate and then we're going to ask you to verify that amount, and so you'll want to know, in your local area, the very best way to report this wages, offices do that a little bit different, some do it in the mail, some have people drop it off, some use fax machines, and I think even after I'm finished, Eric's going to talk to you about an even better way to report wages if it's available to you, so you'll want to find out what the best way is to get that information to social security on time so that you don't have to worry about an overpayment. Any time you report your wages to social security, you should get a receipt that is, shows you that we in fact received the information and that the information on your receipt matches what you reported, and it would be a way for you to let us know later that you did exactly what you were supposed to do. You also want to keep all your original paystub information or pay advices from your employee, the receipts from social security and any of the notices that we send you about how much we're going to pay you and when, keep all of those in a safe place, so that later, if something comes up, you'll have them to refer back to and social security will be able to go through them with you. Okay, next slide. Okay, actually it looks like that I'm all finished, I think that's all I have to say about that.

>> Okay, Crystal thank you very much for your information. It sounds like we share the same mantra, keep your records, and report, report, report. So now, we are going to turn the session to Eric Skidmore, who is with the office of income support program, and he's going to talk to us a little bit about telephone wage reporting. Take it away Eric, and don't forget to un-mute.

[ Silence ]

>> Eric Skidmore: Okay, thank you Ray, can you hear me?

>> [In unison] Yes, we can.

>> Eric Skidmore: Okay, great, and good afternoon everyone, I'm pleased to be here with you from social security's headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland to talk a little bit about the SSI telephone wage reporting system. And we can go to the next slide Ray. Now, this slide talks a little bit about something that some folks may know, which is that, unreported wages are one of the top, in fact the second leading cause of overpayments in the SSI program. The number one cause of overpayments, if you're interested, is money held in financial accounts that exceed the amounts one can have and still maintain eligibility. But unreported wages are the second leading cause and so far today, we've talked about returning to work, and we've talked about overpayments, and we've talked about the importance of reporting, so one of the questions you may have is what is social security doing to try to make the reporting a little bit easier for me. And we can go to the next slide, Ray. And about two years ago, three years ago, social security implemented nationally a telephone system, it's an automated telephone system that we call SSI TWR, which is short for SSI telephone wage reporting, and this telephone system allows folks to receipt supplemental security income, or SSI benefits, or a combination of SSI benefits and social security disability benefits to call in to the system and report their wages automatically once per month and have those wages automatically posted to their claims record, their claims form to social security. Next slide, right. And one of the convenient things about this telephone system, is that a number of folks can actually report for you, you can certainly report your own wages, as long as your over 18, as well, some folks have an individual who helps them handle their social security affairs, receive their benefits, helps make sure that things get reported and we call people who handle the benefits for over people, representative payees, so if you have a representative payee, that person can call the telephone system and report your wages for you. Additionally for those that are married, spouse can call the telephone number and report your wages, or if you are under 18 and you're working, for example, a disabled child who might be 16 or 17 and is employed, then his or her mother or father can actually call the telephone number and report his or her wages for them. Next slide. So, you've gone back to work and you're very interested in trying to make sure that you're not overpaid, that you don't end up owing social security any money as a result of your earnings at least, and you want to find out, you heard about the telephone system, and you want to find out more, how, how can I use it, and what information do I need, and really the best way to do that is to contact your local social security office. For, for this sort of inquiry, I would encourage you to contact your local office rather than the national 800 number that Crystal was talking about, the 1-800-772-1213 number, and the reason is that we, we actually want folks, before they begin using the telephone system to report their wages, we want them to talk to one of the social security representatives, and hear a little bit more about the system, about how they should report, when they should report, and the sort of prompts that they should expect to hear when they call the telephone system. The bottom is that we want this to be a smooth and effective way for you to be able to report your wages in a timely manner every month to social security without having to drop your pay slips in an envelope and mail them in, and without having to journey to one of our field offices and report your wages in the office. So when you contact one of our field offices, one of our representatives will offer to train you to use the telephone system, and you'll receive a training package. This is just a packet of about 15 pages, that sounds daunting but I should caution you that 12 of those pages are actually just a year's worth of calendars, so it's a fairly straightforward thing, there's really only about a page and a half of real substantive content in the training package. If you have access to a personal computer, you may also be given a training cd rom that you can view at your leisure in your home, or at the library, or at your work, wherever you have access to a computer, and the training cd rom goes into a little bit more depth than the paper package and really walks you through a lot of the process, a lot of what you should expect when you first make that phone call. And next slide, right. Now one thing that I should note here, is that before questions start arising in your mind as they would in mine, is that you're not going to see the actual telephone number in any of the slides, and the reason is for the reasons I just referred to, and that's if you're interested, we really want to encourage you to contact one of our field offices and receive the very, very brief training, we're talking maybe five minutes, if that, but the training and the recruitment package, and so that we help ensure that it is an effective experience for you, and that you're familiar with the technology and you're prepared to start reporting using this method, so once again, if you're interested please contact one of our field offices. So when you, when you call into the telephone systems, what wages would you be reporting. Well, the telephone system only accepts reports of gross wage amounts for the prior month. So, for example, we're nearing the end of March right now, if I had been working in March and I was interested in reporting my wages, I would call SSI TWR, and we'll talk about the time frame in a minute, but I would call in early April and the telephone system would prompt me, it would say, please tell me how much you made in March of 2012. And I would tell it, or key, either speak it or key in the amount of wages that I earned in March. Next slide, right. So, when would you need to call. Well, Crystal kind of touch on the is a little bit earlier, and the SSI telephone wage reporting system is actually only open for about the first six to nine days of each month, and the reason is, what Crystal referred to, which is that we want those wages to be on your SSI record in time for us to help prevent you from being overpaid, and if it's any later in the month than that first six to nine days, it's too late, the check is likely already, the amount is likely set and we would not be able to prevent you from being overpaid, even if you called, so for that reason, and just to make it easy for folks, the telephone system is only open the first six to nine days per month. Once again, so going back to my March example, if I wanted to report my wages for March, I would call before say April 6th, and report those wages, and when I did so, I would know I was calling in time to prevent any overpayments from being posted to my SSI record and, therefore, to prevent me from owing money to social security, so there's a, there's a pretty substantial benefit there, and there's also a benefit insofar as, if you call regularly and use the telephone system to report your wages, it will make your next SSI review easier, because in most cases, if you call regularly, we won't need to see your pay slips the next time your SSI case is reviewed, so that does make a little bit less paperwork for you when your case comes up for review. And we can go to the next slide. And I'll just touch briefly this is, once again, the training package gets into much more than what I'm going to touch on here, but just to give you a flavor for sort of the types of things you might need when your, when you make that call, would need the social, your social security number, you would need your date of birth, and of course your first and your last name, you would also need the social security number of the person who earned the wags, if it's somebody else. So for example, if I was calling to report my wife's wages, I would need her social security number in addition to my own. And then of course I would need to know what I'm reporting, I would need to know how much she had earned in the prior month, that's gross wages, and just to make sure we're all on the same level here, gross wages would be the amount of pay that I received before any taxes, before any insurance, before anything else was deducted from my pay for SSI purposes, we generally, there's a few exceptions, but we generally consider the gross amount of your wages when determining eligibility and payment amounts. Next slide. So I think it's a fairly common concern that if I was calling an automated telephone system, once again, there's no representative you would speak to when calling SSI TWR, I would be a little bit concerned about entering my social security number and things like that, what if somebody else accessed the system. Well, we do require you, when you call, to authenticate or to provide information that proves you are who you say you are, and what we use, is the telephone system would ask you to speak your first and last name, in addition to another last name, for example a maiden name or a professional name if you have one, your ssn, and your date of birth. That information is then compared to social security's records and we, as long as everything matches up, then you are authenticated or you are allowed to move further into the system and start reporting wages, and of course, all this goes on and our folks in our systems shop here at social security can talk much more knowledgably about this than I can, but of course all this goes on in a secure environment in terms of the transmission, there's no way that the information could be exposed to anyone who's not supposed to receive it. And we can go to the next slide. And Crystal also touched on this a little bit, we actually, social security is required by law to issue a receipt to you when you report your wages to us or if your representative reports your wages to us, we're required to issue a receipt, and SSI TWR makes that very easy because the telephone system will automatically issue a receipt and mail it to you each time you report successfully or somebody else reports successfully on your behalf. So once again, if I called in and I reported my wife's wages she would get a receipt saying that I had done so. Next slide, and if you forget to report for a month, really all this slide is telling you is that just remember that SSI TWR is not the only way, you can still certainly contact the national 800 number, or visit your local field office, the most important thing to do to prevent those overpayments Crystal was talking about is to make sure you're reporting via some means every month, early in the month. And next slide. And this sort of just touches on that same issue which is, even if I missed, if I forgot, I just got real busy and I forgot to report my wages for March, I could still then call in May and report my wages for April, so missing one month does not preclude you from reporting in future months. And next slide. And if you want to find out more then, once again I would encourage you to contact your local social security field office, you can, of course, also call the toll free service center; however, in all likelihood they will end up referring you to the local field office if you're calling and asking for more information about SSI telephone wage reporting, so rather than make an extra phone call, you may just wish to go directly to your local field office. And that's all I have, so I'll send it back to you Ray.

>> Ray Cebula: Okay, thank you very much Eric. That was great. All right, now we're going to talk about some other resources and that means I'm on, and just so that you know who I am, I introduced myself as a staff member of Cornell, I am also an attorney and a formal PABS attorney, so I will be someone who knows what they're talking about for this. And just to let you know where I'm from, since were covering the entire country, I'm from a little bit further north of Baltimore up in the Boston area. Now the PABS program is the protection and advocacy program for beneficiaries of social security. Now every state or territory has a PABS program and they are located at the state protection and advocacy offices. And what they're job is is to help you, help a person who is returning to work who is receiving SSI and or SSDI, who run into problems. If there is a problem with any aspect of that return to work that requires legal intervention the PABS program is there for you. As you can see these services are free, and they are free to everyone who receives any type of social security benefit based on disability or receiving Medicare or Medicaid. These services are available to you whether or not you have used that ticket. Remember you were told earlier that the ticket use is voluntary, you do not have to assign that ticket in order to avail yourselves of PABS services. Now what kind of things do PABS advocates help you with? All of these things could be consider barriers to work. Advocating for workplace accommodations, if you do have a disability that requires your work station to be modified, your work duties to be modified, the PABS office will be able to assist you in negotiating with your employee. Advocating for vocational services, now we're looking at two different sources of vocational services here, the employment networks or your State VR Agency. The PABS office can help you negotiate those individual work plans or individual plans for employment, or if you run into a snag with your State VR Agency or that EN, they can help you smooth that over. They can most certainly provide you with information and referrals and advocacy services concerning your package of benefits. Now we're not only concerned here when we're returning to work with your SSI and your SSDI, we're concerned with the entire package of benefits that you received, whether that involves workers compensation, unemployment, food stamps or snap benefits, tanf benefits, or any other type of cash benefit that you have, such as subsidized housing, we want to make sure that all of those benefits that might be impacted by earned income are protected to the greatest extent possible, and that the work incentives that apply to each of those programs are also applied appropriately. Now, assisting beneficiaries to remove a barrier to work. You know, there are lots of things that a person with a disability have to consider when they begin this return to work process, and one of those is when and how to report, or if you're going to report to your prospective employer that you have a disability, okay, you're not required by law to do that, but the PABS advocate can talk to you about when that might be necessary, when that might be appropriate. And Crystal talked a lot about overpayments and she said, you know, you can get an attorney if you want to, you don't need one, but you can get one if you want to, and the PABS offices can represent you and provide you with that assistance if you do have an overpayment issue. Now, that's a quick rundown on what PABS can and cannot do, what I want to tell you again, and highlight, is that there are 57 different PABS agencies, again one in every state, in every U.S. territory, and they all work a little bit differently, so the best way to find out what your PABS office handles, is to contact that office. And again the website here is key, www.socialsecurity.gov, if you type that in and add forward slash work, you will get to the worksite, all of the information that we've talked about and all of the people who are there to help you and make up that employment team are listed on the website. There it is, www.socialsecurity.gove forward slash work, and it's going to help you find anybody and everybody who can help you start this journey to work. If you want to call the ticket to work helpline, they can be reached at 1-866-968-7842 that's 866-968-7842, or for TTY and TDD users, 866-833-2967 that's 866-833-2967. Now, look at this will you. I'm looking at a brand new slide here, a new option to communicate here and to get started, a Twitter chat is a set time on Twitter for people to discuss topics using a hash tag. Now, I've got to tell you and be very honest with you that I have never tweeted anybody, so I don't know how this works, but I am going to tell you what this slide says. On March 30th, that is Friday, at 1:30 P.M., if you go to at choose work ssa, they will be facilitating a twitter chat on career help for people with developmental disabilities, so if you can format your question into 140 characters or less you'll be all set, just follow the hash tag at hash tag at capital d capital e chat and at choose work ssa to participate. And you can find out more and maybe how to use twitter at http://choosework.net/blog/jsp/blog.jsp?_id=65. Now, we have questions, while the panel was doing their presentation, Jamie was busy forwarding lots of questions to me and let's see what we have. For Ed, I think I want to throw this question out to you, someone wants to know if they can change EN's if they are unhappy?

>> Ed Wrona:Yes, they can because the ticket to work program is voluntary, it is voluntary not only on the claimant's part, but it's voluntary on the employment network's part as well, and if you have assigned your ticket to an employment network and you eventually find that things aren't working as well as you'd hoped, you can ask to have your ticket unassigned from that employment network and once that is done you can then assign it to a new employment network. That's something that you should pay real close attention to, because one of the things that I mentioned is that in order to have your continuing disability review diary, if that should come up on our records, have that referred that your ticket needs to be reassigned. So if you are going to un-assign in and then reassign it, you need to make for sure that those actions actually get taken so that our records due reflect the correct information.

>> Okay, great, thank you very much. I did have a message from our friends at social security that no more paper tickets are being mailed, but that everyone between the ages of 18 and 64 is eligible, so that piece of paper is no longer necessary. And just to enhance and reaffirm what we're talking about today, we're not talking about simply returning to work, the goal of all of this is work at a level that creates financial stability. Now, I've got one for Crystal. Crystal, total income reported each month, are we talking about gross, or net?

>> Crystal: That's a really good question because I know Eric touched on it, but for both programs, the disability insurance program and the SSI program, the amount that we look at is the gross amount, so when we ask people to verify their earnings, we're looking for their gross monthly amount, and when we're looking at a month, we're looking at a calendar month, so we're talking about, what did you earn from the first day of the month to the last day of the month.

>> Okay, I think you're getting to where we're going, this is a compound question, so what if a pay period spans two months?

>> Crystal: Exactly, we look at the earnings that happened in the calendar month and if the pay period crosses over a month, which happens actually rather frequently, we've divide it and figured out what part belongs in the first month and what part belongs in the subsequent month, so, and you report what you earned and when you earned it and then we can decide which month's they need to go to.

>> Okay, and we have a lot of people ask about the work incentives. Do the work incentives apply to both SSI and SSDI?

>> Yes, they do. As I mentioned, we have specific work incentives to each of the programs. Our work incentives are common to both the SSDI and the SSI program, but the majority of our work incentives are very specific to the particular program, so if you get SSDI benefits only, you have a particular set of work incentives that are available to you. If you get SSI disability benefits only, there are specific work incentives that pertain to you as well. Sometimes people receive benefits under both programs, again, you have the opportunity to take advantage of the work incentives that apply to each particular program. One of the things that we have to caution people on though is that how work incentives apply to one program may be totally separate and distinct when we're looking at a different program, you know, so under SSDI we say you need to report your wages to us, but if they're not over a certain amount you don't need to report it to us until such and such a time, two or three months later possibly, although we'd like you to report every month. But with SSI, because the benefit amount is specifically affected by the amount of income that you have, it's important to report to us on a monthly basis, and as Crystal said, report as early in the month as you possibly can so that we can make the changes necessary for the SSI check that's going to be affected by those earnings.

>> Okay, thank you very much, I've got a question for Eric. Eric, someone wants to know how they can get that training cd rom for phone reporting.

>> Okay, and yeah, by contacting the local field office, they can, they'll supply you with the training cd rom after going through just a little, very, very brief training session with you, like I said, less than five minute, and then you'll have this cd rom, and you'll have it at home for reference, if you need to, a refresher later on or whatever, but you can certainly get those by contacting the local field office.

>> Okay, and we've got several people asking about the receipts from SSI TWR, where, they do, excuse me, SSI TWR does mail a receipt you said?

>> Yes, that's correct.

>> Okay, and where does that go?

>> It would go to the address that we have on record, so whatever address we have for where you would receive other notices from social security would be the same address the receipt would be mailed to.

>> Great, thank you very much. Okay, and we've got one final question, and I think I'm going to ask Ed this one. Ed, somebody wants to try to go to work, how do they get started?

>> Ed Wrona:Well, there's obviously a couple of ways to do that. They can go on to the ticket to work website and contact the toll free number and maybe get referred to an employment network or to the department of rehabilitation for assistance in going to work, they can also contact their local social security office, and we can give them information about what will happen to their benefits when they go to work, and how to get into the overpayment section with Crystal, let them know, if they do go to work, when they need to report those wages to us so that we can ensure that they're going to get the right benefit at the right time.

>> All right, great, thank you very much. All right, and that's going to wrap it up everybody, I would like to thank our panelists for some great information and some great presentations. And watch your email or your other information gathering devices for future webinars coming up. You can check out Facebook at www.facebook.com forward slash choose work, and there's that Twitter thing again, www.twitter.com forward slash choose work ssa and if anybody has any questions at all, the ticket to work helpline is available at 866-968-7842 or for TTY and TDD users 866-833-2967. And folks give us about a week or two and we will have this archived for you so you can download it and listen to it again should you choose. And with that, I will thank everybody once again, and bid everybody a good afternoon, take care.