Amina:
I was a person on Social Security disability myself. I grew up with chronic illness and went on disability at the age of 21. And I was on it for seven years. 

The Ticket to Work actually removed barriers that have been long standing in the disability community. The actual rules and the different kinds of benefit systems or aids that were there legally for people prevented them from moving forward with work. If you got a little money over here you lost it over there. You lost it in your housing or you lose your healthcare, which made it impossible. Who can go to work with a disability and you can't get healthcare? So it was a strategic move from the disability community's point of view to remove these barriers across the different funding silos so that people could go to work. So Department of Labor, CMS, Social Security, they all had to be cooperative together in this removing of barriers. So the Ticket was essential for that, and has been essential, and is working. I like to quote Bernice Reagon from Sweet Honey in the Rock, that, "We lift as we climb." And that's our whole peer view at the independent living centers, so the WIPA program was a perfect place to use that philosophy.