Providing your opinion to leadership could help make and keep WorkWORLD^TM freely available to all in your state. You can email, call, or write the key contact people in your state and at federal agencies.

Most leaders will be interested in why WorkWORLD is valuable to you, and how you use the program or the website. You could direct them to our New Funding Structure for WorkWORLD page so that they can easily review what other states are doing. We also have a testimonial page they may find educational.

Additionally, the Achieving Free WorkWORLD in Your State Through Pledges page shows how state agencies, community-based organizations, and individuals can help build a state funding pool to make WorkWORLD free to residents of your state.

You can also contact Congress and members of your state legislature. Your opinion about WorkWORLD matters. Leadership typically listens to their constituents, and when enough people support an endeavor wise leadership will take action.

You can read the remainder of this page in sequence or jump directly to the following specific sections:

• Contacting Federal Agencies
• Contacting Congress
• Contacting Agencies in Your State
• Contacting Your State Legislators
• Talk with ESI
• Value of WorkWORLD
• More Information

Contacting Federal Agencies

WorkWORLD directly calculates and manages benefits for the Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), Food Stamp, and Section 8 Housing programs. It provides a wealth of information about many other federal benefit programs. Additionally, it takes into account the interaction of these programs with each other and with other benefits such as Medicaid and Medicare.

Federal agencies could actively participate in a meaningful coalition to help make this cross-agency information in WorkWORLD available to all.

You can review our new funding methods, and see how you can get WorkWORLD products or state agencies can collaborate to provide the software for free for residents of their state.

If you do contact leadership, be sure to explain to them why WorkWORLD is valuable to you, and how you use the WorkWORLD program and website.

• Jump to the federal agencies contacts list.

Contacting Congress

You can find contact and other information for your federal members of Congress by entering your ZIP Code in the box at left and then clicking its "GO!" button. A new window will open with your information from an external website. You may need to enter your ZIP+4 or address at that point. Contact lookup services are provided as a convenience only. No endorsement of this commercial service is intended or implied.

Contacting Agencies in Your State

You can review our new funding methods, and see how you can get WorkWORLD products or state agencies can collaborate to provide the software for free for residents of their state.

If you do contact leadership, be sure to explain to them why WorkWORLD is valuable to you, and how you use the WorkWORLD program and website.

To get a listing of key contacts at agencies in your state that may provide support for continued access to WorkWORLD updates throughout the year, select your state from the list below:

* NOTE: States shown with an asterisk in the list above have a current funding method in place that allows residents of the these states to receive the WorkWORLD software and updates at no cost.

Contacting Your State Legislators

You can find contact and other information for your state legislators by entering your ZIP Code in the box at left and then clicking its "GO!" button. A new window will open with your information from an external website. You may need to enter your ZIP+4 or address at that point. Contact lookup services are provided as a convenience only. No endorsement of this commercial service is intended or implied.

Talk with ESI

To discuss agreement possibilities, urge your state leadership and representatives of federal and other agencies to contact:

• Mark L. Hill, Dean's Office Liaison
  Employment Support Institute
  Virginia Commonwealth University
  P.O. Box 844000
  Richmond, VA 23284
  804-278-0152 (voice mail) or 804-828-1992 (office)
  mlhill@vcu.edu
   
• Jim Troxell, ESI Network Developer/Coordinator
  410-544-7193 or 443-223-7060 (cell)
  jltroxel@vcu.edu

Value of WorkWORLD

The following list of bullets describes why state agencies and citizens they serve should be interested in having WorkWORLD available to all in their state:

• Reduce fear of increasing earnings by promoting learned optimism
• Focus on an individual's options while removing fear-provoking irrelevant information
• Provide links to evolving external information
• Analyze complex interacting employment policies to create individualized policy interpretations for particular situations
• Promote choice through "what if" option exploration where outputs show all stakeholders safe paths to better individual and family outcomes
• Exceed training and information systems that only inform people about work incentives by displaying motivating incentives for safe use of work incentives
• Increase net income while expanding career options and protecting the health care and financial security of the individual as well as the family
• Find solutions to real or perceived barriers to earnings and getting or keeping health care
• Realize self-determination, life-long learning, and individual/family control over rules and resources
• Reduce taxpayer burden as greater independence for people with disabilities lowers demand for government-funded benefit programs.

More Information

Our New Funding Structure for WorkWORLD page provides an explanation and the rationale for the actions discussed above.

The Achieving Free WorkWORLD in Your State Through Pledges page shows how state agencies, community-based organizations, and individuals can help build a state funding pool to make WorkWORLD free to residents of your state.

See how to get WorkWORLD for complete information about ordering WorkWORLD from any state.

For additional information, please read the comprehensive document Using WorkWORLD to Achieve Employment, Housing, and Self-Determination Outcomes for People with Disabilities: Options for State Agencies and Other Organizations to Sustain ESI's WorkWORLD Software and Training and Consultation Services. It is available in two formats:

 Get the State Options document in Microsoft Word (.doc) format.

 Get the State Options document in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format.