The Other Welfare, series homepage, Boston Globe: “The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program for children was created mainly for those with severe physical disabilities. But the $10 billion in federal benefit checks now goes primarily to indigent children with behavioral, learning and mental conditions. Qualifying is not always easy — many applicants believe it is essential that a child needs to be on psychotropic drugs to qualify. But once enrolled, there is little incentive to get off. And officials rarely check to see if the children are getting better…”

• A legacy of unintended side effects, By Patricia Wen, December 12, 2010, Boston Globe: “Geneva Fielding, a single mother since age 16, has struggled to raise her three energetic boys in the housing projects of Roxbury. Nothing has come easily, least of all money. Even so, she resisted some years back when neighbors told her about a federal program called SSI that could pay her thousands of dollars a year. The benefit was a lot like welfare, better in many ways, but it came with a catch: To qualify, a child had to be disabled. And if the disability was mental or behavioral – something like ADHD – the child pretty much had to be taking psychotropic drugs. Fielding never liked the sound of that. She had long believed too many children take such medications, and she avoided them, even as clinicians were putting names to her boys’ troubles: oppositional defiant disorder, depression, ADHD. But then, as bills mounted, friends nudged her about SSI: ‘Go try.’ Eventually she did, putting in applications for her two older sons. Neither was on medications; both were rejected. Then last year, school officials persuaded her to let her 10-year-old try a drug for his impulsiveness. Within weeks, his SSI application was approved…”
• A coveted benefit, a failure to follow up, By Patricia Wen, December 13, 2010, Boston Globe: “Her toddler was adorable and rambunctious, but his vocabulary was limited to ‘Mommy’ and ‘that,’ while other children his age knew dozens of words. When little Alfonso tried a full sentence it came out in a swirl of sounds, often followed by a major league tantrum when he realized he was not understood. And so his mother, Roxanne Roman, was not surprised when the 18-month-old was diagnosed by a specialist with speech delay. It came as a shock, however, when she learned from relatives that Alfonso’s problem might qualify him for thousands of dollars in yearly disability payments through the federal Supplemental Security Income program. For Roman, pregnant with her second child at age 17 and living at her mother’s, the extra income was attractive. She wanted to rent her own place. Within three months, the boy’s application was approved. Alfonso receives $700 in monthly cash benefits, plus free government-paid medical coverage. Roman said her relatives told her she can pretty much count on the disability checks for Alfonso, now 5, to keep arriving in the mailbox for the rest of his childhood…”
• A cruel dilemma for those on the cusp of adult life, By Patricia Wen, December 14, 2010, Boston Globe: “Bianca Martinez is 15 and has a dream, to work someday as an animation artist, preferably in Japan, a country she has been fixated on for years. But for now the idea of getting any kind of paid job, even at the Holyoke Mall, where many of her teenage friends work, worries her because of what she might lose: Her $600-a-month federal disability check, which represents more than half her family’s income. ‘That’s why I’m not working this summer,’ said Martinez, a freshman at Holyoke High School who is being treated for ADHD and depression. ‘If I work and I get a certain amount, then they’ll take money away from my mom. She needs it. I don’t want my mom’s money to go down.’ Tens of thousands of teenagers who receive disability checks through the $10 billion federal Supplemental Security Income face this same painful dilemma: They are old enough to accept part-time jobs, but they worry that the extra income will be detected by the government and cause their benefits to be docked or terminated. In many cases, their indigent families have depended on the income for years…”