Social Security Disability Resource Center
My name is Tim Moore. I am a former disability claims examiner for DDS, or disability determination services, in North Carolina. As an examiner, I learned how difficult the process could be for claimants. This is because our agency turned down at least 70 percent of all individuals applying for disability in NC. Often, we turned down people with serious medical conditions that were making their lives a daily struggle, physically, mentally, and certainly financially.
I found that I had trouble working as an examiner because our bureaucratic agency seemed intent on denying so many claims. It made little sense to me. And so at one point, I took employent elsewhere as a disability case manager for a law firm handling a large caseload of SSD and SSI cases. That’s where I began to see things from a different perspective. It’s also where I began to see very how little many people know about the disability process, sometimes including the lawyers who handle such claims.
Writing about disability online
As with DDS, I spent several years at the law firm, interacting with clients and helping them with their cases. But I left this position to develop a website that did one thing: teach people about Social Security Disability and SSI. That site was called Disability Secrets. It did very well in that corner of the web because I wrote about filing for disability from the perspective of someone who actually worked on claims. That site proved to be so popular that a company in California offered to buy it from me for a large sum and I made the mistake of selling it. I say “mistake” because it is now a corporate website and it has none of the heart that it once had. Now, it looks like just another lawyer website.
What came after
Because I thought people needed a real website on this topic, one that tried to answer questions and make the disability system less confusing, I created another site and called it The Social Security Disability Resource Center, or SSDRC. And that’s the site you are on now.
The difference between now and then, however, is that I am now an ADR, or accredited disability representative, my accreditation coming from NADR, the national association of disability representatives. To gain this distinction, I took a nationally proctored exam that tests disability representatives extensively on a litany of aspects of disability law. It’s the type of exam that you hope you only have to take once because it can take months of preparation and the exam is very difficult.
This site is made for you
If you need help on getting your claim started, if you need help filing an appeal, if you have questions about how the process works, or what to do in situations, this site has over 2,000 pages that answer such questions. And more are being added weekly. If you want to find answers on a specific issue or topic, a good way to look through the site is to do something called a site search on google.
To do that, go to google and type the following — site:www.ssdrc.com topic. Remember to keep a space between .com and your search topic. For example, if you were looking for information on disability requirements, you would type this — site:www.ssdrc.com disability requirements.
I hope this site helps on your way to getting approved for disability.
Good luck and best wishes,
Tim Moore