VISUALLY IMPAIRED CHILDREN: Disability Benefits for Children in the United States

Sunday, 16 September 2012

Disability Benefits for Children in the United States

The Paralympics have without doubt raised the public awareness of disability issues in the UK. Hopefully that is true also in other parts of the world. This article concerns disability benefits. Although this blog was primarily designed for the UK it is now accessed globally. I was sent this article this week and I think it deserves an airing as it provides a cross-cultural perspective to the whole area of disability benefits. Moreover some of the parents I have worked with have returned to the USA in the past year and it may be useful for them. So I commend this article and thank the author for taking his time in writing it.

Social Security Disability (SSD) is a U.S government program administered by the Social Security Administration and designed to provide financial relief to those who are unable to work due to a disability. You can apply for either Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. SSDI is intended for individuals who are unable to work for at least a year due to their disability and have paid Social Security Taxes (FICA taxes) for 5 out of the last 10 years. SSI, on other hand, is intended for those who do not have the necessary work history.

When most people think about Social Security Disability applications, they imagine applications filed by disabled workers who are no longer able to perform the duties required by their work due to the severity of their disabling condition. The truth is that many of the disability applications that the SSA receives are filed on the behalf of children who are suffering from severely debilitating conditions. The following information will help you understand the disability claim process for a child and how a child can receive Social Security Disability benefits.

Who Qualifies?

Children who are under 18 years of age may qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. Those who are between the ages of 18 and 22 may qualify for SSDI benefits if their parents have earned enough work credits to qualify for these benefits.

In order to qualify for SSDI or SSI benefits, a child must have a physical or mental condition that has a serious impact on his or her activities and the condition must be expected to last at least one year or result in death.

How to Apply

In order to apply for Social Security Disability benefits for a child, you need to go to the SSA’s website and fill out the Child Disability Report. This is the first step in the application process. If you do not have access to the Internet, you can visit your local Social Security office to obtain the form.

When you file the initial application, be sure that you provide as much medical documentation as possible to support your claim. If you do not provide the information during the initial application process, the examiner in charge of the claim will likely request copies of medical records when the file is assigned to him or her.

The examiner who reviews your child’s claim will determine whether or not your child’s disability prevents him or her from participating in age-appropriate activities. In order to do this, school records will also play a part in determining the eligibility of your child and you will need to provide these records or sign a release allowing the SSA to obtain the records in order to process your child’s claim.

Filing an Appeal

If your child’s initial application is denied by the Social Security Application, you have a right to appeal the decision. This will likely mean a hearing before an administrative law judge. This is where you will plead your case to the judge, who has the power to overturn the SSA’s decision and grant your child the benefits he or she needs. It is highly recommended that you retain the services of a disability attorney when attending a disability hearing as an attorney is familiar with the disability laws and how specific laws can help your child’s Social Security Disability case.

If the hearing results in further denial, there is still hope. You can submit an appeal to the SSA Appeals Council and, if that does not work, further your appeal to the district court. Again, it is crucial that you work with a disability attorney if you are denied benefits during the initial stage of the application process as you will need the help of an attorney to navigate the steps of a disability appeal and increase your chances of a successful appeal outcome.

If you are worried about the cost of a disability attorney, you will be happy to know that these professionals work on a contingency basis. You will not have to come up with any money up front. The attorney only collects a fee if you win your disability case. If the attorney’s services result in the award of disability benefits to your child, that attorney will receive 25 percent of the back pay that is awarded to your child by the SSA.

by Ram Meyyappan,
www.socialsecurity-disability.org

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One of the great inspirations to me must be Helen Keller. Helen Keller was not born blind and deaf; it was not until she was 19 months old that she contracted an illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain", which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness left her deaf and blind. At that time, she was able to communicate somewhat with Martha Washington, the six-year-old daughter of the family cook, who understood her signs; by the age of seven, she had over 60 home signs to communicate with her family.

In 1886, her mother, inspired by an account in Charles Dickens' American Notes of the successful education of another deaf and blind woman, Laura Bridgman, dispatched young Helen, accompanied by her father, to seek out Dr. J. Julian Chisolm, an eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist in Baltimore, for advice.^[11] He subsequently put them in touch with Alexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell advised the couple to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind, the school where Bridgman had been educated, which was then located in South Boston. Michael Anaganos, the school's director, asked former student Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired and only 20 years old, to become Keller's instructor. It was the beginning of a 49-year-long relationship, Sullivan evolving into governess and then eventual companion.

Anne Sullivan arrived at Keller's house in March 1887, and immediately began to teach Helen to communicate by spelling words into her hand, beginning with "d-o-l-l" for the doll that she had brought Keller as a present. Keller was frustrated, at first, because she did not understand that every object had a word uniquely identifying it. In fact, when Sullivan was trying to teach Keller the word for "mug", Keller became so frustrated she broke the doll.

Keller's big breakthrough in communication came the next month, when she realized that the motions her teacher was making on the palm of her hand, while running cool water over her other hand, symbolized the idea of "water"; she then nearly exhausted Sullivan demanding the names of all the other familiar objects in her world.

Due to a protruding left eye, Keller was usually photographed in profile. Both her eyes were replaced in adulthood with glass replicas for "medical and cosmetic reasons". Wikipedia

Ophthalmology and opthalmologists

Ophthalmology is the branch of medicine that deals with the anatomy, physiology and diseases of the eye. An ophthalmologist is a specialist in medical and surgical eye problems. The ophthalmologist is the eye doctor. Since ophthalmologists perform operations on eyes, they are considered to be both surgical and medical specialists.

The word ophthalmology comes from the Greek roots ophthalmos meaning eye and logos meaning word, thought, or discourse; ophthalmology literally means "the science of eyes". As a discipline, it applies to animal eyes also, since the differences from human practice are surprisingly minor and are related mainly to differences in anatomy or prevalence, not differences in disease processes. However, veterinary medicine is regulated separately in many countries and states/provinces resulting in few ophthalmologists treating both humans and animals.

History of Ophthalmology

Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

The seventeenth and eighteenth century saw the use of hand lenses (by Malpighi), microscopes (van Leeuwenhoek), preparations for fixing the eye for study (Ruysch) and later the freezing of the eye (Petit). This allowed for detailed study of the eye and an advanced model. Some mistakes persisted such as: why the pupil changed size (seen to be vessels of the iris filling with blood), the existence of the posterior chamber, and of course the nature of the retina. In 1722 Leeuwenhoek noted the existence of rods and cones^,though they were not properly discovered until Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus in 1834 by use of a microscope.

Ophthalmic surgery in Great Britain

The first ophthalmic surgeon in Great Britain was John Freke, appointed to the position by the Governors of St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1727, but the establishment of the first dedicated ophthalmic hospital in 1805; now called Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, England was a transforming event in modern ophthalmology. Clinical developments at Moorfields and the founding of the Institute of Ophthalmology (now part of the University College London) by Sir Stewart Duke Elder established the site as the largest eye hospital in the world and a nexus for ophthalmic research.

Ophthalmology and ophthalmologists

Purkinje is a known to all ophthalmologists for Purkinje's cells, Purkinje's images. Jan Evangelista Purkinje was a versatile scholar with wide-ranging interests and an exceptional capacity for innovative thinking. He used the name “Purkinje” until 1850, from whence he used the correct spelling, Pyrkyně. We use Purkinje for the eponyms because that is the more common. Purkinje was a Czech nationalist and had a major influence on Czech cultural life in the middle of the 19th century. He was a friend of the famous German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who wrote about Purkinje: “and should you fail to understand, let Purkyně give you a hand!” Purkinje published a Czech translation of Friedrich Schiller's poems, and translated works of William Shakespeare into Czech.

Purkinje created the world’s first department of physiology at the University of Breslau, Prussia in 1839 and the first official physiological laboratory, known as the Physiological Institute, in 1842. Purkinje used to believe that that experiments in one's own body ("in corpore nobili") gave more practical results than those in animal experiment ("in corpore vili") or in fatally ill patients. And when he was a medical student, Purkinje used to investigate the physiology of sight by experimenting on himself with a variety of drugs, including Belladonna. His interest in the physiology of light led him to make animated cartoons, and thus he became one of the earliest motion picture pioneers.

He is best known for his discovery of Purkinje cells, large nerve cells with many branching extensions found in the cortex of the cerebral cortex. He is also known for his discovery of Purkinje fibers, the fibrous tissue that conducts the pacemaker stimulus along the inside walls of the ventricles to all parts of the heart. It was Purkinje, who introduced the scientific terms plasma. An early user of the improved compound microscope, he discovered the sweat glands of the skin, germinal vesicles. He recognized fingerprints as a means of identification and noted the protein-digesting power of pancreatic extracts. He died on July 25 of 1868.


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Sunday, 16 September 2012

Disability Benefits for Children in the United States

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