Amid Disability, a New Lease on Working Life

“Four years ago, I wanted to try working again, but I was scared if I got off it, I would never get back on it. I’ve always been a hard worker and a provider until my injury,” says Doug Force, 49.

Force went on SSDI in 2007. A few years earlier, he had been a union painter in East Peoria, Illinois, and lifting heavy paint buckets was part of the job. At age 29, with three children, he was diagnosed with a degenerative back disease. “There were times I couldn’t even walk,” he says.

He found Ticket to Work by doing an internet search for “Is it hard to get back on disability if you try to work?” Through the program, he connected with Allsup Employment Services (AES), one of hundreds of workforce development agencies that partner with the SSA to provide vocational training and rehabilitation, career advice, job placement and workplace support to people receiving disability benefits.

TTW enrollees work with these groups to develop a plan to enter or return to the labor force. They must take steps within a set period to complete related education, training or employment goals. Those on SSDI (but not SSI) may work for up to nine months over five years and keep their benefits, regardless of how much they earn. (The SSA calls this a trial work period [TWP].)

If a job becomes permanent and pays over the SSA income limit, their benefits end, but Social Security has an expedited process for reinstating payments if their condition forces them to back off work.

In January 2023, Force landed a job as a security guard in Dresden, Tennessee, where he and his wife had moved the previous year. Since March 2023, he’s been working full-time as a forklift operator. He credits his participation in Ticket to Work with improving not just his finances but his mental health.

“You need to feel like you’re contributing,” he says. “AES changed my life. If it wasn’t for them, I’d probably still be on disability. I got my last [benefit] check January 1 of this year.”

Robin McCoy, a breast cancer survivor, transitioned from IT work to running her own therapy practice in the Detroit area.

Brittany Greeson

Careers interrupted by cancer

Robin McCoy spent more than 20 years as an IT manager in various industries until 2019, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was awarded SSDI in 2020. When she felt well enough to look for work again, she found her employment gap was a problem.

“You say ‘cancer’ and they say, ‘No, thank you,’ ” says McCoy, 60, of Southfield, Michigan, a Detroit suburb.

She was contacted by AES in October 2021 (the SSA shares lists of qualifying beneficiaries with Ticket to Work partner agencies to do outreach and recruit for the program). “I was in the car. It was a rainy day,” she recalls.

While she was “gung ho to go back to work,” McCoy says, she told AES she wasn’t interested in another IT position. “I was done with searching and in and out of treatment. Me working for someone else was not a good fit.”

Before her cancer diagnosis, she was already trying to pivot to a new career. She had earned a master’s in psychology and was working part-time as a therapist and counselor while studying for her Ph.D. (She earned it in 2023.) McCoy shared this with her AES case manager, and the agency “offered me support so I could work for myself.” She’s now a full-time business owner, supervising a team of mental health professionals at her practice in Southfield.

Verna Boyd had difficulty resuming her nursing career in North Carolina after cancer treatment but found a job with help from the Ticket to Work program.

Justin Cooke

Verna Boyd encountered similar hurdles when she sought to get back to work after surviving breast cancer. Two years after her March 2021 diagnosis and seven months after getting on SSDI, she was pronounced cancer-free. A registered nurse in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area with more than two decades of experience and a community-service award to her credit, she started applying for hospital jobs.

She got a few interviews and “discussed things with them,” including her health, but nothing came of it. “I ended up with cancer,” says Boyd, 56. “I never thought I would have had issues going back to work.”

After she found out about Ticket to Work, “it all came together,” she says. “Next thing I know I was on the phone, and they said, ‘You can work, and we’ll help you.’ ” She enrolled with an agency that was “able to help me get set up with different jobs. I told them to see what I can do. It was like a team effort.”

Boyd got a job in May 2023 as a full-time traveling nurse at Eastern Carolina University Hospital. That assignment recently ended, but Boyd says she is waiting on a new post expected to start this summer.

‘It’s all about testing the waters’

AES is an Employment Network (EN), one of two primary types of providers that partner with the SSA on Ticket to Work. ENs can be private employers, nonprofit organizations, government agencies or other entities that deliver employment training and services. There are currently 386 ENs involved in Ticket to Work — 93 that operate nationally (like AES) and 293 that provide local services.

The other major type is a Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) agency. These state-level offices typically offer more intensive training, education, career counseling and placement help for people whose disabilities require more significant services and accommodations for them to work. Ticket to Work participants may work with an EN, a VR or both.

“It’s all about testing the waters,” says Diane Winiarski, director of Belleville, Illinois–based AES. “The beneficiaries I see have a feeling of accomplishment and greater self-worth that they’re finally self-sufficient and [feel like], ‘I’m contributing back.’ ”

According to SSA data, about 392,000 people participated in Ticket to Work in 2023, and the program has served more than 1.7 million beneficiaries since it launched in 2002. That’s a lot of people ushered back into the labor force and onto a firmer financial footing, but it represents a fraction of disability beneficiaries, who numbered nearly 11.4 million in May 2024.

Many are genuinely unable to do more than token work due to their condition, but some may simply be unaware of their options. A 2015 Social Security survey on disability beneficiaries’ views on employment, the most such recent data available, found that 37 percent had a goal of returning to work but only 27 percent knew about Ticket to Work.

Numbers like that have officials involved in the program putting greater focus on spreading the word.

“We have to be more directly connected and be more focused on where people with disabilities are, rather than having them find us and come to us,” says Danté Allen, commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA), an arm of the U.S. Department of Education that oversees the country’s 78 VR agencies.

Allen — a self-described VR alumnus who was born with spina bifida — says that means getting the message out about Ticket to Work to RSA partners such as school systems, state workforce agencies and Centers for Independent Living (CILs), federally funded programs that help people with disabilities remain in their communities.

A fabricator and welder before going on disability with degenerative disc disease, Rick Marshall now works nights as a warehouse associate while pursuing a degree at Arizona State University.

Cassidy Araiza

For Rick Marshall, discovering TTW helped him feel hopeful after six years on disability benefits.

“They made me see that I can still do things I didn’t know I could do,” says Marshall, 59, of Glendale, Arizona, who has degenerative disc disease. He used to work as a heavy structural fabricator and welder, a physically demanding job involving large, heavy tools. He started having back and neck injuries in late 2013 and was approved for disability benefits in 2015.

By 2021, he felt ready to work again. After enrolling in TTW, he got part-time seasonal employment as an usher at local football stadiums. In March 2022, he started a full-time job as a warehouse associate, working the overnight shift so he can go to school during the day at Arizona State University, where he’s studying for a degree in social work.

“I still have a lot to give back,” Marshall says.