Evaluation of the Ticket to Work Program, Implementation ...

14before Ticket, it is perhaps surprising that the Phase 1 SVRAs obtained so many assignmentsinitially—the number obtained per month in months 14 to 16 was almost nine times as largeas the number of cases per month for which SSA made payments in FY2001, the fiscal yearpreceding the initial TTW rollout.It is possible that the total number of beneficiaries obtaining services from the Phase 2SVRAs has declined markedly since the Phase 2 rollout began, but so far, we do not havequantitative or anecdotal indication of such a decline. (Because the RSA statistics are forclosures and SVRA service delivery can take many months or even years, it will be sometime before we can generate statistics on the post-TTW rollout entry of SSA beneficiariesinto SVRA services, including those whose Tickets are not assigned to the SVRA.) Asshown in Table II.1, the number of SVRA closures in the Phase 1 states did not fall after theintroduction of TTW in FY2002, and we have no reason to expect that they fell in the Phase2 states either. 5 Moreover, if the Ticket rollout were the cause of the drop in the number ofcases for which SSA made traditional payments in FY2002, we would expect the drop to belater in Phase 2 states than in Phase 1 states; instead it is contemporaneous. The RSA datasuggest a different proximate cause: a decline of similar magnitude in the percentage ofbeneficiary clients who are competitively employed 6 in all three state groups. 7 One possibleexplanation of this decline is the weak economy. Interestingly enough, the percentage ofnon-beneficiary clients closed as competitively employed did not decline in the same period. 8This might suggest that some factor other than the economy was responsible for the declinefor beneficiaries. It also might be that competitive employment of beneficiary clients ismore sensitive to the decline in the economy because beneficiaries have a means of supportthat is not available to nonbeneficiaries, or because beneficiaries have more severe disabilitiesthan nonbeneficiaries.Federal officials and SVRA representatives we spoke with also said it is unlikely thatTTW was responsible for the reduction in payments under SSA’s traditional paymentsystem. Because the average SVRA client receives services for 25 months (Gilmore 2004), it5 Because statistics for total closures might mask a decline in closures for beneficiaries who entered SVRAprograms recently, we also tabulated the number of closures in each year for beneficiaries found eligible forSVRA services in the same year. We did not find evidence of a decline in such closures for either Phase 1 orPhase 2 states. We also checked the RSA 911 data to see if the number of closures for beneficiaries might havedeclined relative to those for non-beneficiaries from FY2001 to FY2003, and found virtually no relative changein the Phase 1 states and a relative, but small increase for beneficiaries in the Phase 2 states.6 Competitive employment excludes employment at sub-minimum wages and employment in shelteredworkshops.7 As discussed in Chapter VI, in Phase 1 states, the percentage of beneficiary clients aged 18 to 64 whoSVRAs closed to competitive employment dropped from 29.6 percent in FY2001 to 26.1 percent in FY2003.For Phase 2 states, the comparable drop is from 29.8 percent to 24.4 percent, and for Phase 3 states it is from30.9 percent to 26.1 percent.8 For all non-beneficiary clients, the percentage competitively employed at closure increased from 33.3percent in FY2001 to 34.0 percent if FY2003, compared with a decline from 29.8 percent to 25.6 percent for allbeneficiary clients.II: Beneficiary Participation in Ticket to Work