Children’s HealthWatch Principal Investigator, Ruth Rose-Jacobs, Sc.D., co-authored a letter to the editor published in the Boston Globe in response to a recent article on federal Supplemental Security Income and disabled children with special healthcare needs.
While review would help, program still vital for needy families
As clinicians and researchers serving low-income families of children with disabilities, we are concerned with some of the issues raised in the Boston Globe article “Aid to disabled children now outstrips welfare” (Page A1, Aug. 28).
Supplemental Security Income helps low-income children with disabilities live at home, prevents expensive institutionalization, facilitates productivity into adulthood, and partially offsets extensive specialized expenses and parental lost wages. SSI regulations support work. Our research and that of others report employment in one-third of single-parent and two-thirds of two-parent households that receive child SSI. Nonetheless, given these children’s expenses, even working parents who receive these benefits are more likely to experience difficulties providing basic needs to all family members.
