Are Children More Easily Approved for Social Security Disability?

Why Are Children's SSI Claims Harder to Prove?

Many children's disability claims are hard to prove because they're based on impairments that are difficult or impossible to detect with standard medical tests, like blood tests and X-rays. Some of the childhood impairments that fall into this category include the following:

• asthma
• seizure disorder (epilepsy)
• ADHD, and
• learning disabilities.

These medical conditions common in children can be difficult to win benefits for—except in severe cases.

Proving a Child's SSI Claim Based on Asthma

The Social Security Administration (SSA) evaluates children with asthma or seizures according to the number of documented attacks they experience—meaning asthma attacks or seizures requiring hospitalization—within a specified period of time.

Social Security also considers whether a child is taking medication for the disorder. Children with severe asthma often use prescribed steroids such as prelone syrup or solumedrol. If your child's disability claim is based on asthma and your doctor hasn't prescribed a steroid medication, the disability claims examiner might not believe the severity of your child's asthma rises to the level of disability. Read more about getting disability for a child with asthma.

Getting SSI for Children with Seizure Disorders

For a child with a seizure disorder, medication can be an issue. If your child takes prescribed medication and still has documented seizures frequently enough to meet the requirements of Social Security's impairment listing (childhood epilepsy listing 111.02), your child's disability would likely be approved.

But suppose a child isn't taking seizure medication as prescribed, or the child's parents can't afford the seizure medication. In either case, Social Security can't know if taking the medication as directed would improve the child's condition or if the child's seizures would continue to be disabling. With no evidence about the effects of regular medication use, Social Security may deny such a claim.

For more information, see our article on how not taking medication affects disability decisions.

Getting SSI for Children With Learning Disabilities or ADHD

Children with ADHD or learning disabilities aren't often granted benefits for these conditions. Social Security denies the majority of SSI disability applications for children that are based on ADHD or learning disabilities.

It's not impossible to get SSI benefits approved for a child with ADHD or a learning disability. But to have any chance of approval based on ADHD or a learning disability, your child should:

• be receiving special education
• have an IEP in place, and
• have evidence of measurable "functional deficits" in school.

And you'll need to ensure Social Security receives all pertinent evidence of your child's disability, including medical reports and school records.

All of the following will affect your child's SSI claim for ADHD or a learning disability:

• teacher observations
• whether or not your child has recently been administered psychological testing (such as the WISC-III or Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children, version 3), and
• whether or not your child has recently undergone achievement testing.

For more information, see our articles on disability for children with ADHD and disability for children with learning disabilities.