It's been a busy, busy month! Between college finals, Little Guy's musical and final concert recitals (not to mention his 18th birthday and planning his graduation with all the ex-inlaws and outlaws), I've had computer problems as well. Hope you've all been well!
Oh and we've been dealing with Social Security. Gak! Well sorta.
We were told to get our ducks in a row and apply for all kinds of things about this time. So we're in the middle of applying for legal guardianship (the homestudy went well, ex-hubby is not opposing, all that's left is the court hearing), and SSI benefits. I feel weird about applying for SSI right now, because Little Guy will remain at home, and my ex and I agreed to continue to support him until he's 21 in our divorce agreement, so he really doesn't have an immediate needs that we can't take care of.
Of course, eventually he would like to try to live independently---either in a group setting, or in assisted living with his own apartment.
The thing is that SS "prefers" that a client's most recent evaluation, etc. be less than a year old. Little Guy's last eval was three years ago, but we have current and concurrent school and doctor's reports, so if we waited another 3 years, we'd just have to have him re-evaluated again. Figured it was best to start the process to get him in the system now. Since we heard it can take a long time.
Well call me Bessie and slap me silly. It's been less than a month, and he's already been approved. All that's left is a visit to an SS-approved psychologist to confirm all of the medical findings next week, but he's already scheduled to start receiving benefits. I suspect that it's because the lady who did intake is a master of efficiency.
We had an appointment set up with someone who was highly recommended in the dis community in the Colorado Springs area who helps people with their claims. I didn't hear about him until after we had originally applied, and we couldn't get an appointment until the end of the month. I DID mention his name at the end of our initial appointment (we applied for Big Kid as well) and asked what I should tell him when we had our consultation. Maybe it was his name alone that moved mountains, who can say? But they knew him. The intake consultant said, "Do whatever he tells you to do!"
If you're in the Springs/Southern Colorado area and having problems applying or qualifying for SSI, drop me a line and I'll send you his name and number. We're fortunately going to cancel our appointment with him for Little Guy, but will still see him for Big Kid.
And now for a weird example of our gov't at work....
Got some paperwork from SS about Little Guy's case, and it said, "Your medical records indicate that part of your disability is alcoholism....."
Huh? Was there some oopsy box-checking where somebody mistakenly missed "autism"?
I called our intake consultant. "There's a HUGE mistake here!"
She checked her records and asked me to check the printout I had received when we were done with our appointment.
Nope. No alcoholism there.
There was, however a notation of "mental impairment".
Is that a synonym for alcoholism these days? Gak!
So how are you guys doing?
