How do you apply for disability benefits in Indiana?

Social Security decides a disability claim made in Indiana. The Department of Workforce Development runs the state's unemployment insurance and takes no part in that decision, though one of its rules asks a question a disability claim asks too: whether you are able to work.

Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI)

Social Security calls this one Disability, and it pays monthly to people whose disability stops or limits their ability to work. Eligibility rests on a disability or blindness plus enough work history.

Benefits may include a monthly payment and Medicare, and the size of the payment is set by the work history you built before the disability began. Social Security also says you may be able to return to work, or carry on working, without losing Disability.

Supplemental Security Income (SSI)

SSI pays monthly to people with disabilities and to older adults who have little or no income or resources. Adults and children might be eligible with little or no income, little or no resources, and a disability, blindness, or age 65 or older.

SSI also comes with a monthly duty: report your wages, any other income, and changes to your resources or living arrangements to Social Security.

How to apply

Social Security asks you to start on its website, and each program's page explains its own application: Disability for SSDI, and Supplemental Security Income for SSI. If you cannot use the site, Social Security asks you to call its national number or your local Social Security office instead, and its contact page lists the ways to reach it, an office locator among them.

If you are claiming unemployment at the same time

Indiana pays unemployment benefits to someone who is able, available, and actively seeking full-time work. DWD's own list of reasons a claimant could be ineligible for a week includes being temporarily unable to work through illness or injury, so a week when illness or injury kept you from working is a week DWD may not pay for.

Why the job ended is a separate question from whether a given week can be paid, and Indiana law answers it in the claimant's favor: someone whose unemployment results from a medically substantiated physical disability, who is out of work involuntarily after making reasonable efforts to keep the job, is not disqualified for that separation.

Each claim is judged on its own rules, by its own agency. Who qualifies for Indiana unemployment sets out DWD's side of it.

If you work for the State of Indiana

Indiana runs a disability plan of its own, through the State Personnel Department, for people employed by state government. An employee becomes eligible after 6 consecutive months of full-time work and pays for it by payroll deduction, one-quarter of one percent of gross bi-weekly salary. It comes with the job rather than with living in Indiana, so if you are on a state payroll it is worth asking your own agency about before you treat Social Security as the only route.

Vocational Rehabilitation, Indiana's employment help

Vocational Rehabilitation, run by the state's Family and Social Services Administration, is employment help rather than a monthly payment, and eligibility for it is not based on income or financial resources. It can help you explore your employment interests and skills, find a first job, obtain assistive technology to keep a job, re-enter work after time away, train for a new career, or move up in the one you have.

Services are delivered locally from 25 Area Offices, with counselors covering every county. To start, submit a referral form or contact a VR office and tell them you want to apply: Vocational Rehabilitation at FSSA has the referral page and the map of offices.