An Effort to Secure
Benefits for a City’s
Forgotten Residents
AS THE HEAD of Health & Disability Advocates, Barbara Otto understands exactly how diffi- cult it can be to navigate the complex world of
social-service benefits.
“People who are the most vulnerable end up falling through the cracks because they can’t figure out
the very system that’s supposed to help them,” says
Ms. Otto, who has led the Chicago-based policy and
advocacy organization since 1994, two years after its
founding.
That conundrum gave Ms. Otto and her staff an
idea: What if Health & Disability Advocates figured
out a way to get Chicago’s neediest citizens, including
homeless and mentally ill residents, the benefits they
were entitled to?
Four years ago, the group officially started its SSI
Homeless Outreach Project. The concept, modeled on
a similar program in Maryland, is disarmingly simple: A case worker seeks out clients around the city
who are probably eligible for Social Security benefits
but do not receive them.
Lisa Parsons, a lawyer who has worked for the SSI
Outreach Project since it was started and is currently its only full-time staff member, spends her days
traveling around the Windy City. A recent afternoon
found her in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood at a
drop-in homeless shelter, whose case managers had
referred her to several potential clients.
“Wherever there are people who need our help,
that’s where I go,” says Ms. Parsons. “I try to de-
termine if the person has significant psychiatric or
physical problems. If the answer is yes, I try to figure
out how to get them benefits as soon as possible.”
The process allows Ms. Parsons to gain an inti-
mate understanding of the lives of her clients and the
particular problems that plague them. In one recent
case, the outreach program successfully won back
benefits for a homeless man it had been trying to
help for more than a year.
“He was a severe alcoholic, delusional, eating out
of trash cans,” notes Ms. Parsons. And somewhere
along the line, she says, he had been declared dead
by the Social Security Administration: “It could have
been due to something as simple as returned mail.”
Not only was the man eligible for benefits, but he was
owed $100,000.
The outreach project, which has a total annual
budget of $222,000, receives money from the City of
Chicago as well as from the Field Foundation and
Northern Trust Foundation.
In 2009, the most recent year for which data are
available, the charity was able to bring in nearly
$775,000 in federal benefits for the 238 people seeking help that year.
And while Ms. Parsons takes pride in the success
of the outreach project in helping some of Chicago’s
neediest residents get housing, medical care, and other support services, it’s a less tangible outcome that
she most celebrates.
In another recent case, Ms. Parsons was able to secure benefits for a client in his 40s with a psychiatric
disorder who had been on the streets for decades.
“He got the help he needed and he was able to
move in with his sister,” says Ms. Parsons. “Some-
times that little intervention is what’s needed to get
someone reconnected with their family, with their
community.”
Here, Ms. Parsons (left) laughs with her client,
Vernice Deller, a formerly homeless woman who now
has disability benefits, housing, and other services
thanks to Ms. Parsons. —JENNIFER C. BERKSHIRE
Photograph by Jay Dunn
