Evaluation of the Ticket to Work Program Initial Evaluation Report

B.25
Social Security benefits. IDR refers individuals who do not appear to be good candidates to
other providers.
At the time of the first interview, roughly a quarter of IDR’s Ticket assignments were
from individuals who had been working with IDR prior to their participation in TTW. The
remaining assignments were from retail clients. In addition to the current Ticket
assignments, IDR had another 100-120 retail clients with whom it was working to create
IWPs. Staff expected that roughly half of these individuals would actually assign their
Tickets to IDR. The remaining individuals were expected to assign their Tickets to
competing ENs, fail to follow through with the process, or be screened out by IDR. In
general, the calls from retail clients yielded a very low percentage of Ticket assignments: IDR
received one Ticket assignment for every 20-30 initial inquiries it fielded.
Ticket Assignments and Outcomes. To date, IDR has not been able to meet the
objectives it established in its original business plan. IDR projected that 80% of its assigned
Tickets would yield at least one payment, and that 50% would lead to payments over the
entire 60-month period. However, at the first interview, staff expressed the view that these
numbers might be overly optimistic, especially considering the potential difficulties in
tracking clients over the full 60 months. IDR estimated that the Ticket program would
enable it to spend $1,000 per client, but if it is able to increase the success rate this number
could double. IDR also expressed concern about the length of time it takes for SSA to
process payments. Although IDR had placed seven Ticket holders in employment at the
time of the first interview, it had yet to receive a single payment on any of these claims—
some of which were submitted more than four months ago. In one case where IDR worked
with a Ticket holder for a period of time and helped him get a job, SSA terminated his
benefits. Since SSA had not yet compensated IDR, the service provider lost the majority of
the money it had invested in training this individual.
Program Administration. A major problem that IDR staff noted at the first interview
was the lack of reliable and current information about Ticket holders. On a number of
occasions IDR had worked with a Ticket holder to complete an IWP, only to be told by the
PM that the beneficiary was ineligible. Although IDR staff had improved its screening
techniques, interviewees believed that if the individual was ineligible, he or she should not
have received a Ticket in the first place. Staff also believed they spent too much time
working on administrative issues for clients. IDR’s business model assumed that staff would
spend 25 hours working on each case. The hope was that 80 percent of this time would be
devoted to directly serving the client, with the rest used for administrative tasks. However,
staff was able to spend only 15 to 18 hours working with each client, because verifying the
beneficiary’s eligibility, confirming the IWP with the PM, and securing payment from SSA
proved too time consuming.
c. Status at Follow-up
Service Delivery. At the time of the second interview, IDR was receiving between 30-
60 calls per day from retail clients. Over the past year, IDR has tightened its screening
requirements. According to agency staff, extensive delays in receiving payments from SSA
Appendix B: Provider-Specific Case Study Summaries