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The program is working as intended

• The RTWSP has been successfully targeted to workers with more-severe disabilities.
• Program administration is efficient and rapid, with little evidence of fraud or abuse.
• The RTWSP is paid to workers in a timely manner after application: 90 percent of successful applicants are paid the RTW Supplement within three weeks of applying.
• The vast majority of applicants ultimately receive the RTW Supplement: The ultimate acceptance rate among applicants is 96 percent.

But take-up rates can be improved, and workers without legal representation were unlikely to apply

• Despite the efficiency of the application process, just over half of eligible workers apply for the RTWSP.
• Legal representation is the factor most strongly associated with take-up of the RTWSP among eligible workers. After controlling for a wide range of other factors, eligible workers with legal representation were more than 40 percentage points more likely to apply for the RTWSP than comparable eligible workers without representation were. This suggests that many workers are failing to navigate the process on their own.
• Hypothesized barriers to access, such as language or geography, were not as important as legal representation in determining which eligible workers applied for the RTWSP.
• The eligible population for the program is larger than expected when the program was established, and increasing receipt of the SJDB voucher may contribute to continued eligibility growth.