Evaluation Design for the Ticket to Work Program: Preliminary Process Evaluation
March 2003
Social Security Administration
This report presents findings from the preliminary process evaluation of the Ticket to Work program (TTW), a program established by the 1999 Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act (Ticket Act), designed to increase access to, and the quality of, rehabilitation and employment services available to Social Security disability beneficiaries. TTW incorporates the cost-reimbursement payment system that SSA has used in the past to pay state vocational rehabilitation agencies (SVRAs) for rehabilitation services provided to beneficiaries, provided that the beneficiary obtains earnings of at least the substantial gainful activity (SGA) level for nine months. Added to this performance-based system are two new payment systems with substantially stronger performance incentives, that can be used by either SVRAs or other qualified organizations, called Employment Networks (ENs): the outcome and milestone-outcome payment systems. Under both new systems, beneficiaries must exit cash benefit status on the disability rolls by reason of increased earnings for 60 months for SVRAs and ENs to receive full payment. The outcome payment system potentially pays more, but requires cash benefits to be zero before any payments are made, while the milestone-outcome system provides early payments based on achievement of earnings targets, even if cash benefits are never reduced to zero. SVRAs and ENs must each choose one of the two new payment systems, but SVRAs can also elect to use cost reimbursement on a case-by-case basis.
The report is based on in-person and phone interviews conducted with staff from: SSA; MAXIMUS, the contractor hired to be TTW's Program Manager (PM); and 27 ENs and the 13 SVRAs serving beneficiaries in the 13 states that participated in Phase 1 of the TTW rollout: Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, and Wisconsin. We also reviewed numerous documents and conducted limited analyses of administrative data. The data for this report was collected and synthesized during the July through November 2002 period, and thus, with a few exceptions, represent the status of TTW as of that time.