Does Your Child Have Severe ADD? 3 Things You Should Know About Social Security Benefits
Parenting a child with Attention Deficit Disorder can be a real challenge. You have to spend more time than the average parent on everything from behavioral strategies to helping with homework. You have to pay for a multitude of medical costs – frequent doctors appointments, expensive prescriptions, and increased transportation costs are just some of the financial hurdles that families find themselves facing. Every family with child who has ADD is different – some cope with therapy, others with medication. Some find support in public or private school systems, while others homeschool their children to meet their needs. In any case, parents of children with ADD often find themselves overwhelmed emotionally, physically, and financially. For some of those families, Social Security benefits can help ease the burden.
SSDI or SSI?
There are two types of Social Security benefits that you'll need to look into if you have a child with ADD: Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) and Social Security Income (SSI). Although the two programs are related and often discussed as if they are interchangeable, they aren't the same. Knowing the difference will help you understand where to start.
SSDI is typically granted to adults who are deemed disabled by the Social Security Administration's standards. However, it can also be granted to the children of a disabled parent. If the child is also deemed to be disabled, as they may if they have severe ADD, then the SSDI benefits can be continued in the child's name once they turn 18.
If neither parent is disabled, then a disabled child may still be eligible for SSI payments. To be eligible, the child has to be under 18, living at home, and qualify medically as a disabled person. They family also has to meet certain income requirements.
Medical Eligibility
In order to be considered medically eligible for disability benefits, a child with ADD has to suffer from inattention, impulsiveness, and hyperactivity. While these are all ADD traits, not all children with ADD present with all of these traits. Hyperactivity, for example, is not universally seen in children with ADD. Children who don't have all of the listed traits will be considered ineligible.
That's not all. To be considered eligible, a child with ADD must also display impairment in social function, personal functioning, or communication and cognition. Without at least one of these impairments, the child won't meet the qualifications for disability.
Difficulty of Qualifying
If you're considering applying for Social Security benefits for your child with ADD, you should know up front that getting approved is difficult – probably more difficult than it would be to get approved with a more visible physical disease. This is due in part to the subjective nature of ADD diagnoses – doctors and other experts often disagree on the type and severity of a child's ADD.
Furthermore, the experts who determine ADD disability for the Social Security Administration are usually psychologists, not medical doctors (most other diagnoses are determined by medical doctors.) The SSA psychologist making the determination uses subjective criteria, like teacher's observations, instead of objective criteria like lab results to decide eligibility. That is because there is no medical test that will show ADD or prove the severity of a patient's ADD.
If you decide to go ahead with an SSI or SSDI application for your child with ADD, it's a good idea to hire an experienced Social Security Disability lawyer such as Mckown Jim Attorney At Law to help you through the process. With legal representation, you're less likely to experience a denial, and your application may take less time.
