It’s been more and more difficult for people to get service from the Social Security Administration, but maybe there’s a bit of hope on the horizon as the agency slowly returns to in-person customer service. Here are the opening paragraphs from an article in the Washington Post:
The Social Security Administration is expanding a vital pandemic service to taxpayers that it had restricted to just one hour a day, allowing drop boxes at its closed field offices to accept sensitive documents and forms for more hours as it eases toward opening some facilities.
The agency is putting the workaround in place while its network of 1,230 local offices remains closed until at least mid-April, apart from a smattering of in-person appointments. Most Social Security employees have been working from home since March 2020, but officials say they are trying to improve assistance to low-income elderly and disabled people who rely on their local Social Security office to navigate one of the government’s most complex systems of subsistence benefits.
The agency announced last week that it reached an agreement with its major unions to begin a return to the office this spring. Bargaining over the timing of the move was contentious for months, officials on both sides acknowledge. The deal followed criticism from advocates for the disabled and members of Congress about Social Security largely closing its doors while most government offices opened months ago or never closed to the public during the pandemic.
Field offices are expected to reopen for appointments and walk-in visits that are crucial for disabled and elderly claimants who have trouble negotiating the Internet and the phone. Many details are unresolved, including how many days the field staff will continue to work from home. Administrative law judges who hear appeals of denied claims for disability benefits — and are now conducting hearings on the phone or through videoconferencing — will resume in-person work in May and June, the agency said.
The Washington Post reported in December that Social Security had dramatically curtailed its public services during the coronavirus pandemic. Absent open offices, the agency was depending on the public leaving birth certificates, divorce records, green cards and other primary documents required for them to verify their identity in drop boxes that were open as little as one hour a day. Forty percent of field offices provided no boxes at all. (The agency originally told The Post the number was 20 percent).
“We are in the process of expanding both the number of offices with drop boxes and the hours those drop boxes are available to align with the local office’s hours (normally 9 am to 4 pm),” Mark Hinkle, a Social Security spokesman, said in an email.
