Suit to Seek Mentally Ill’s SSI Benefits : Social services: The unusual action is designed to make it easier for eligible people to apply and qualify for Social Security payments.

Advocates for the poor in Orange County are expected to file an unusual class-action lawsuit today against the Social Security Administration, contending that the federal agency systematically denies benefits to the mentally ill by failing to help them apply.

In the lawsuit, the Legal Aid Society of Orange County and other agencies accuse Social Security of “arbitrary and irrational” discrimination against the mentally ill and demand reforms that will facilitate the distribution of SSI, or Supplemental Security Income. SSI is designed to aid the blind, disabled or elderly who have limited incomes.

William Wise, an attorney with the Senior Citizen Legal Advocacy Program in Santa Ana, said poor people with mental disabilities confront two problems in getting benefits: most are unaware that they qualify, and those who know find the lengthy, complicated forms too daunting.

To solve those problems, Social Security must dispatch outreach workers to places where the poor and the mentally ill congregate to inform them that they might qualify for benefits, and the agency must mount a major effort to help applicants complete and submit their forms, Wise said. The lawsuit seeks court orders to force those changes.

Jean Forbath, director of Share Our Selves, a Costa Mesa nonprofit agency that joined the lawsuit as a plaintiff, said the problem is one of an overburdened system.

“With a huge bureaucracy, they’re so swamped and so bogged down with regulations that the human element just escapes them,” she said.

The lawsuit drew commendation from Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento), who has introduced legislation to force Social Security to reach out to homeless people who might qualify for benefits. Matsui said the 4.4 million people receiving SSI benefits represent only a portion of those who are eligible.

“The Social Security Administration must take a more active role in reaching out to potential beneficiaries if we are to truly help our neediest citizens,” Matsui said in a prepared statement.

Social Security officials could not be reached for comment on the lawsuit, which seeks changes on behalf of all mentally disabled people in Orange County who qualify for SSI.

Wise said the lawsuit represents the first time that such a claim has been pressed under a section of the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that bars discrimination against those with handicaps by executive agencies of the government. That section of law is more commonly used for such things as demanding access to buildings for the physically handicapped, he said.

Wise said SSI applicants must fill out long forms, wait in crowded offices, return several times with detailed medical and financial data and comply with strict deadlines. Wise said he knows of many instances in which mentally ill people have ended up on the street because they did not know that they were entitled to SSI benefits, which average about $500 a month, or could not finish the application process.

“It’s just too much for them,” he said.

In one instance, Wise said, a Garden Grove man lost his job because he suffered paranoid delusions, hallucinations and periods of withdrawal. With no income, he lost his apartment and ate only when he could get meals at local charities, Wise said. He lived on the streets for eight months before an Orange County Mental Health caseworker got him into a board-and-care facility.

“What happens is that when Social Security fails to help these people, county agencies like Mental Health and Share Our Selves end up expending a lot of their resources to do something the federal system should do,” Wise contended.

Forbath said her agency has stretched its resources to locate those eligible for SSI and submit forms for them. SOS “had to jump all kinds of hurdles” to get benefits for one young man who had been living on the streets for years since his mental illness forced him to drop out of UC Irvine, she said.

Doug Barton, the county’s deputy director of mental health, said his agency has expended some of its own funds--money that is already spread thin helping hundreds of county residents--to train its case managers to shepherd people through the SSI application process. Still, he said, many who do not come to his agency never get benefits at all.

“The seriously mentally ill have a problem with tolerance,” he said. “(The application process) frustrates them. They throw up their hands and walk away. That’s why we see people going through trash cans and things like that, because they’re not getting benefits they have a right to get.”