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The number of soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan is increasing each day. Families that have spent so many anxious nights hoping for a safe return of their loved ones are now able to celebrate and focus on the future.

For many veterans, this can be a very unsettling time. Finding employment or continuing care for wartime injuries can lead to questions and uncertainty. While there are many programs in place to assist those who have served their country so admirably, it is not uncommon for there to be a long wait to receive veterans' benefits. With more and more soldiers returning and veterans from other wars aging, this wait could get even longer.

Children with special needs often require a great deal of expensive care. This can place a significant financial burden on parents or guardians. Flexible employment is a necessity in order to provide the child the proper attention and care.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) provides for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) to children with disabilities. It can be extremely difficult to receive benefits, since so many factors go into examining the child's application. The agency will examine the income and resources of the child's household, and if this amount exceeds a specific amount, benefits will be denied.

The prolonged recession has had a serious impact on the job market in across the United States. Jobs disappeared, and the few available positions that did open up had countless applicants. People could no longer count on their steady employment, leading many scrambling to find a way to make ends meet. Unemployment benefits only lasted so long, and with so many workers unable to find work, Social Security Disability applications have been on the rise.

When someone is feeling under the weather, the main concern is recovering as fast as possible. If the illness is serious enough to keep a person out of work for an extended period of time, the worker may need to look for additional sources of income while they recover. Some may even apply for Social Security Disability if their condition will keep them out of work for an entire year.

For those who will eventually recover from their illnesses, the wait to receive benefits will be frustrating. The initial application and appeals process are time-consuming, meaning that many people might have recovered by the time their claims have been finalized. But what happens to those individuals who are suffering from a terminal illness?

Mental illness is a serious issue that is often misunderstood. People often only worry about major mental health matters, neglecting other minor concerns which may be just as damaging. But what happens when this starts affecting a person's ability to complete work? What happens when people file for Social Security Disability benefits because of a mental illness?

The Social Security Administration (SSA) recently announced that it plans an extensive examination of the Social Security Disability Insurance program. The agency has hired the Administrative Conference of the United States to conduct a thorough review of the SSD process nationwide. The study will focus on wait times for applicants as well as the decision making being applied by administrative law judges (ALJs) during the appeals process.

We have all heard the countless stories saying that various Social Security programs are running out of money. Each year we are apparently getting closer and closer to the funds drying up. Officials blame fraud and other misuse as reasons for the problem, especially when discussing Social Security Disability payments. They cite examples of undeserving applicants or judges with high SSD appeals approval rates to prove their theories.

However, these explanations may be missing one of the more likely reasons that the programs are running low on money. The baby boomers have started aging, meaning many of them have started to develop conditions that make SSD income a necessity.

Law enforcement officials recently discovered terrible mistreatment of mentally disabled adults whose Social Security Disability Insurance (SSD) payments were stolen by someone abusing the representative payee program. The case throws light onto the potential for shady behavior and other weaknesses of the program that allow someone other than the beneficiary of SSD payments to receive and cash the disabled person's SSD benefits checks.