Virginia disability benefits come from two federal programs, SSDI and SSI, run by the Social Security Administration, with the medical review handled in-state by the Disability Determination Services division of the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services. Virginia also runs its own Auxiliary Grant program for certain disabled residents in assisted living or adult foster care. For 2026, you cannot earn more than $1,690 per month and still qualify as disabled under federal rules, or $2,830 if you are blind.
Which Program You Qualify For
Federal law defines disability the same way for both programs: a physical or mental impairment that keeps you from any substantial gainful activity and that is expected to last at least 12 continuous months or result in death. What splits SSDI from SSI is your work history and your finances.
SSDI: Based on Work History
Social Security Disability Insurance is for people who paid into Social Security through payroll taxes. You need a certain number of work credits, and the exact count depends on your age when the disability begins. Workers 31 or older generally need at least 20 credits earned in the 10 years right before the disability started. Younger workers can qualify with fewer. Someone who becomes disabled at 27, for example, would need just 12 credits earned since age 21. Your SSDI payment is based on your lifetime earnings, not your current financial need.
SSI: Based on Need
Supplemental Security Income is for disabled people with very limited income and assets. No work history is required. Your countable resources cannot exceed $2,000 if you are single or $3,000 if you are married. Resources include bank accounts, cash, stocks, and most property beyond your primary home and one vehicle. SSI pays a standard federal benefit rate that adjusts each year.
Some people qualify for both at the same time, usually when SSDI payments are low enough that SSI tops them up.
Virginia’s Auxiliary Grant
The Auxiliary Grant is a state-funded supplement for people who receive SSI, or who are 65 or older, blind, or disabled, and who live in a licensed assisted living facility, an approved adult foster care home, or qualified supportive housing. Your monthly income must fall below the state-approved Auxiliary Grant rate for your type of care, and your countable assets cannot exceed $2,000 individually or $3,000 as a couple. You must also have lived in Virginia voluntarily for at least 90 days before applying.
The grant pays the difference between your income and the facility’s approved rate, leaving you with a small personal needs allowance. You apply through your local department of social services, which looks at both your financial eligibility and your care needs. Bring proof of income, bank statements, a list of personal assets, identification, proof of citizenship, and your Social Security number.
How the SSA Decides You Are Disabled
Whether you file for SSDI or SSI, the medical decision follows the same five-step process. Any step can end the evaluation.
- Step 1 looks at current work. If you are earning more than $1,690 per month in 2026 (or $2,830 if blind), you are considered capable of substantial gainful activity and the claim stops here.
- Step 2 asks whether your impairment is medically determinable and severe enough to significantly limit basic work activities. Minor conditions get screened out.
- Step 3 checks your condition against the SSA’s directory of listed impairments. If yours matches or equals a listing, you are approved without further analysis.
- Step 4 assesses your residual functional capacity and asks whether you could still do any job you have held in the past five years.
- Step 5 considers your age, education, skills, and remaining abilities to decide whether any other work exists in the national economy that you could do. If none does, you are found disabled.
Virginia’s Disability Determination Services handles this review. State examiners and medical consultants read your evidence, contact your providers, and may send you for a consultative examination at no cost if your records are too thin to decide.
Certain severe diagnoses, including ALS, some aggressive cancers, and early-onset Alzheimer’s, are flagged automatically for Compassionate Allowances and processed in weeks rather than months. You do not apply separately for this.
What to Gather Before You Apply
Medical evidence carries the most weight. Pull together names, addresses, and phone numbers for every doctor, clinic, hospital, or therapist who has treated your condition. Include dates of specific tests like MRIs, blood panels, or psychological evaluations, since those help establish when your disability began. The SSA requires objective medical evidence from acceptable sources: licensed physicians, psychologists, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants, among others.
The Adult Disability Report (Form SSA-3368) is where you describe how your impairment affects your daily life and ability to work. Be specific. “I can stand for about 10 minutes before needing to sit” tells the examiner more than “I have trouble standing.”
You will also need a work history for the five years before your disability began, with each job’s title, type of business, and physical and mental demands. For SSI or the Auxiliary Grant, add financial records: bank statements, proof of any pension or workers’ compensation, and documentation of property you own.
How to File in Virginia
You can file your initial claim online at the SSA’s website, by phone, or in person at a Virginia Social Security field office. The field office verifies your non-medical eligibility (age, work history, Social Security coverage) and then transfers the case to Virginia’s Disability Determination Services for medical review.
You will get a confirmation after submission and can track status through your “my Social Security” online account. As of early 2026, the national average processing time for an initial disability claim is about 193 days. Complex cases, or cases with thin medical records, take longer, especially when the state agency has to schedule a consultative exam.
You can hire an attorney or other representative at any stage, and most work on contingency. Under the SSA’s fee agreement rules, the representative’s fee cannot exceed 25 percent of your past-due benefits or $9,200, whichever is less. That cap covers the combined back pay in cases involving both SSDI and SSI. You pay nothing up front.
After You Are Approved
The Five-Month SSDI Waiting Period
SSDI payments do not start immediately. Federal law imposes a five-month waiting period from the month the SSA says your disability began, and your first payment arrives in the sixth full month. If the SSA finds your disability started on March 15, your entitlement starts in September, with the payment arriving in October. ALS applicants have no waiting period. Because the application process itself usually runs longer than five months, most approved recipients also get a lump-sum back payment for the time between their entitlement date and their approval.
Medicare
Every SSDI recipient becomes eligible for Medicare after 24 months of receiving disability benefits. If you had a previous period of disability that ended and you become disabled again within 60 months, your earlier months count toward the 24. People with end-stage renal disease or ALS skip the standard waiting period.
Medicaid: A Virginia Catch
Virginia does not automatically enroll SSI recipients in Medicaid. SSI approval makes you income-qualified, but you still have to file a separate Medicaid application through your local department of social services. File it as soon as your SSI approval notice arrives, or you will have a gap in coverage.
If You Are Denied
Most initial disability claims are denied. The SSA has a four-level appeals structure, and every level carries a 60-day deadline from the date you receive the denial notice. The SSA assumes you receive the notice five days after the date on it, so you effectively have about 65 days.
The first step is reconsideration, where a different examiner at Virginia DDS reviews your file from scratch and takes any new medical evidence you submit. Reconsideration denials are common, but you cannot skip this step to get to a hearing.
If reconsideration is denied, you can request a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge at one of the SSA’s hearing offices in Virginia. The judge examines evidence, takes your testimony, and may hear from vocational or medical experts. You can submit new evidence. Many claims that eventually succeed succeed here, and this is the stage where having a representative matters most.
If the judge rules against you, you have 60 days to ask the SSA’s Appeals Council to review the decision on the written record. The Council can deny review, issue its own decision, or send the case back for a new hearing.
After that, you have 60 days to file a civil action in the U.S. District Court for the judicial district where you live. The court reviews whether the Administrative Law Judge made legal errors on the existing record; it is not a new disability hearing, and new medical evidence is generally not allowed.
Keeping Benefits
Approval is not permanent. The SSA runs continuing disability reviews on a schedule tied to how likely your condition is to improve:
- If improvement is expected, your first review comes 6 to 18 months after the date the SSA set as the start of your disability.
- If improvement is possible, reviews happen roughly every three years.
- If improvement is not expected, reviews happen about every seven years.
Your initial award notice tells you which category you are in. Between reviews, you have to report changes that could affect benefits, including work activity, changes in earnings, and other income like workers’ compensation or employer disability pay. Not reporting work can create overpayments you will have to repay.
Working While Receiving Benefits
SSDI includes a trial work period so you can test a job without immediately losing benefits. In 2026, any month where you earn more than $1,210 counts as a trial work month. You get nine trial work months within a rolling 60-month window, and during those months you keep your full SSDI payment no matter what you earn. After the trial work period, the SSA checks whether your earnings exceed the $1,690 substantial gainful activity threshold. If they do, benefits stop after a three-month grace period.
If your benefits end because of work and your disability later forces you to stop again, you can request expedited reinstatement within 60 months. The SSA provides up to six months of provisional payments while it reviews your medical condition, so you are not left without income during the review and you do not have to start a new application from scratch.