Wichita ? Alice Harrington has been reluctant to work more than part time in the past out of fear of losing her eligibility for disability benefits.

Now Harrington has become part of a new program to remove that barrier to finding full-time employment. On Thursday, she became the first disabled person in Kansas to receive a “ticket to work and self-sufficiency” issued under a new program of the Social Security Administration.

The program allows Social Security disability recipients who go back to work to hang on to health coverage for as long as 8 1/2 years. Also, people can go back on disability without having to requalify if they lose the job in the first five years.

“It’s taken away a lot of the fear of going back to work,” said Harrington, whose disabling mental condition, dysthymia with major depression, forced her to quit nursing in 1999.

The ticket to work can be presented to any of several job networks that can provide a variety of training to help disabled people enter or re-enter the work force and stay there.

The philosophy behind the voluntary program is that everybody benefits when people who are now receiving government aid can partially or wholly support themselves.

“They go from one side of the ledger to the other,” said John Garlinger of the Social Security Administration’s regional office in Kansas City, Mo. “We don’t want to put people in a situation where they’re worse off for working.”