The wait for disability

Tarring a roof or putting up walls never made Jeff Niccum bat an eye. Manual labor is all the work he has known.

But his life of construction, roofing and landscaping has resulted in degenerative joints and painful arthritis in his early 40s. Giving his son J.T., who turned 5 Wednesday, a bath hurts him. J.T. got a train for his birthday, but Niccum could only put the toy together from a recliner. Getting on the floor with the boy was out of the question.

Niccum, of Perryville, Mo., has been rejected four times for Social Security disability. His appeals have come back unfavorable since 2000. After the first time, he said he thought they might be right. So he landed a job driving a forklift at Gilster-Mary Lee. After just a week of work, he couldn't get out of bed.

Administrative law judges have acknowledged he has a disability and that he can no longer work, but the no's keep coming.

"I'm at my end. I don't know what to do," Niccum said, turning his entire torso left or right instead of just his head because of painful spurring in his neck.

Jeff Niccum, a single father of two, has been trying for six years to receive disability pay. (Aaron Eisenhauer)

The process doesn't always take this long. Darin Ford, a hearing representative with The Shaw Group, said the Social Security Administration has a list of diseases and conditions that basically guarantee approval.

Some get approved within a year. Some drag out for several years.

"If they have to wait for a hearing, that's where you're going to get into your time cases," Ford said.

For Niccum, he's still hoping for approval, but said he's tired of not working and needs to get money somehow to support his son and 7-year-old daughter Jordan.

The Missouri Division of Vocational Rehabilitation is one way back to work for people who find themselves no longer able to do what they've always done.

"Believe it or not, this happens all the time," said Elizabeth Smith, a counselor with Vocational Rehab in Cape Girardeau. "The career field that we thought we would do doesn't work out anymore."

Vocational Rehab helps people either alter their job so they can still work -- like providing voice recognition software to someone who can no longer type because of pain -- or the facility retrains a person to a different career.

They perform a vocational assessment to find out a person's strengths and interests to try and match them with a new career. The facility is under the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. They can provide training or even pay for classes at a local college to people who have a disability that qualifies them for the program.

"We try to help people look at what they can do versus what they can't do," Smith said.

Niccum can no longer do manual labor. He said he's going to try Vocational Rehab while he waits on Social Security to make another decision.

"I really want to try it," he said, "but I don't think I can do it."

Concentration was never his strong point, he said. "If I don't get my disability, I've got to do something."

He might still get it, though. Ford said different judges look at a case in different light and updated medical information can provide that extra bit of evidence. He said a backlog of cases adds to the wait time.

A CBS report found that on the federal level, two out of three disability cases are rejected and the administration has a 750,000-case backload.

"The administration has hired more judges this year to try and resolve more backlogs," Ford said.

The wait times can be longer depending on where a person lives, the number of cases filed there and how many judges are in the area.

Niccum was OK waiting for approval at first because his wife was working. They have since split up, and he has custody of his son and daughter. They live in a house his aunt used to rent out.

"The only thing I have to do is mow the grass," he said. "But we can't stay there much longer."

charris@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 246