Demand for disability advocates

Demand for Advocates Reflected in SSA Stats!

When choosing a new business service you must consider if the industry is right for you.  Starting a small business or adding an additional service to an existing company is a serious long-term consideration.  You must contemplate the future growth potential of the chosen field.  Within the field of non-attorney disability advocacy, determining future growth can often be done by reviewing data within Social Security’s annual statistics.

When pondering demand, think cold hard stats!  SSA’s internal statistics show that one of the driving forces behind the rise of professional disability advocacy is Social Security’s modernization process.   This process has been occurring for the past fifteen years.  However, the recent arrival of the SSA online application process has escalated the modernization. 

As Social Security (SSA) adapts to computerized case processing, the application process becomes a little more deceptive to the masses.  While becoming easier for a client to interact with SSA, it’s actually harder for the client on his own to determine a clear strategy for a successful application.  If you don’t know what SSA is looking for, you can’t provide it.  If you can’t provide it, you lose the case.

While SSA’s modernizations drive demand for disability advocates in a general sense, the number of those receiving benefits over time is the actual stimulant.  The level of Social Security disability allowances is known as the allowance rate.  By looking at the allowance rate over time, it is clear from SSA’s historical data that it has become much harder to acquire disability benefits.  This is especially true in the last five years which correlates perfectly with SSA’s Disability Service Improvement Program (DSIP).

Social Security began its DSIP modernization in 2006.  In that year, approximately 1.2 million individuals applied for SSDI benefits.  Of that number, more than 51 percent received an allowance determination.   By 2013, the number of applicants was 2.6 million with an allowance rate of just 33 percent.  Result:  More than twice the number of applicants with a nearly 20% overall decline in allowances.  This dramatic downward trend in the allowance rate is the real source that fuels the need for disability advocates. 

In disability advocacy, as the percent of those winning allowances on their own declines, the need for advocate representation increases.  Today, client representation demands that you take a case on multiple appeal levels adding more complexity.  Our advocate training program provides you with detailed training on multiple adjudicative levels assuring the greatest possibility for success.  Learn more by visiting our informative Blogs:

Advocate Training
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If you’d like to learn more about our unique business focused approach to advocate training, visit our website at www.ssahelp.com.  Contact us at 303-766-1111.