The Social Security Administration (SSA) is the federal body in charge of distributing pensions to taxpayers who have retired or are unable to work due to a disability. The social program also oversees Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
Some youngsters can benefit from the latter, as long as they meet specific standards. Currently, the agency supports over 71 million beneficiaries both abroad and in the United States, but the most vulnerable among them remain the children who fall directly or indirectly under their care, as minors are unable to fend for themselves.
Requirements for Receiving Social Security SSI Benefits
According to the Social Security Administration, children with severe physical or intellectual disabilities such as cancer, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, low birth weight, or entire loss of eyesight or hearing are eligible for SSI benefits.
Furthermore, the child’s disability must last at least 12 months or end in death. The Social Security Administration maintains a list of disorders and medical criteria that are especially used to evaluate child-related claims.
Eligibility stops at the age of 18, but a person under 22 who regularly attends primary or secondary school may still be deemed a “child” for benefit purposes.
However, even with these criteria in place, not every child will be eligible for benefits since they are in the care of their parents, and their personal circumstances will influence the care they can provide for their children as well as the state support they will require.
For example, because SSI places a high value on assets, which are typically possessed by parents in the case of minor children, they may not receive the full amount of benefits to which they are entitled due to these assets.
As a general rule, SSI is designed for those who make no more than $1,971 per month from employment, although the income cap increases for couples and parents who apply for children.
Furthermore, the program needs you to have little to no finances, $2,000 for individuals and $3,000 for couples; however, if you are a parent asking for a child, these figures increase by $2,000 to cover a larger population.
Because resources are a broad notion, some items are always exempt from counting toward them, such as your home and the land on which it sits as long as you reside there, one vehicle per household, the majority of personal belongings and household goods, and property that you cannot use or sell.
However, this is not always enough to sustain a family, which is why there are alternative types of income that do not count towards these statistics yet benefit families enormously:
- State SSI supplement payments
- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits (food stamps)
- Section 8 housing vouchers
- Rent rebates or property tax refunds
- Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
- Certain expenses for people with blindness
- Certain expenses for people with disabilities
New rules for SSI brought forth by the SSA
To expand access to resources, particularly for families, the SSA has chosen to broaden the definition of a public assistance household. This broader definition will now “include households receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments and households in which not all members receive public assistance.”
The new definition will enable more people to qualify for SSI, boost some SSI recipients’ payment levels, and minimize reporting responsibilities for people living in public assistance households.”
While it appears to be a minor change in the grand scheme of things, the rule will allow families to receive higher levels of assistance than previously because, according to the SSA, “if an applicant or recipient is determined to be living in a public assistance household, the agency assumes they are not receiving assistance from other household members that would otherwise be counted as income.”
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