SSA-1372-BK: The Work Activity Report for Children
This form shows up when a child is applying for Social Security disability benefits. It asks about the child's work activities, whether paid or unpaid, and what they can actually do in a work-like setting. You're filling this out if your kid is under 18 and you're going through the SSDI application process. The SSA uses it alongside Form SSA-3373 (function report) to get a picture of what the child does day-to-day. Here's how you actually fill it out without guessing. The form is split into a few sections. The first part is about the child's current work situation. If the child has a paid job, you list the job type, hours per week, and what the work actually involves. If the child doesn't have paid work, you still need to address it — write something like "No paid employment" rather than leaving it blank. Blank sections get flagged during review and slow things down. The second part covers unpaid work and household activities. This trips people up the most. Chores, helping with siblings, taking care of a parent, babysitting — all of this counts as "work" in SSA's evaluation framework. They want to know the level of effort. A child who folds laundry every evening is doing unpaid work. Be specific about hours and tasks. "Helps with dishes" isn't enough. Write "Runs dishwasher, loads and unloads, 20 minutes daily after dinner, four nights per week." The detail matters because it helps SSA assess whether the child can sustain work-like activity.
The third section is about the child's abilities and limitations. This is where the form gets clinical. You'll check boxes about how the child handles tasks — can they understand instructions, follow routines, adjust to changes, interact with others, manage stress, and maintain concentration. There are checkboxes for "does not need assistance," "needs some assistance," and "needs considerable assistance." This part directly feeds into how SSA evaluates whether the child meets disability criteria. If the child is in school, there's a section for that. You list the grade, type of school (regular, special education, homebound), and whether the child receives accommodations. This section matters because the SSA compares the child's functioning at home to their functioning in structured settings. A child who can focus in school but falls apart at home is telling a different story than one who struggles everywhere. There's also a section about earnings. If the child is earning money, even from a small gig, you need to report it. The SSA has a Substantial Gainful Activity threshold — for 2025 it's $1,550 per month for non-blind individuals. If a child regularly earns above that, it could affect eligibility. That said, for children on disability applications, the SSA tends to look more at the nature of the work than the dollar amount. Still, report accurately. Mismatched income figures are a common reason for delays.
Once you've filled it out, you submit it with the rest of the disability application package. You can print it from ssa.gov and mail it, or submit it electronically if you're working with a representative. Keep a copy for your records. I had a case last year where the SSA couldn't locate the submitted form because the parent had mailed it but never kept a copy, and by the time it was discovered six months later, the evidence had degraded and needed to be recreated from scratch. One thing the instructions don't make clear: the SSA looks at the consistency between what you write here and what you write on the function report (SSA-3373). If the 1372-BK says the child works 10 hours a week at a family business but the function report describes a child who can't maintain focus for 20 minutes, that discrepancy will get noticed. Both forms need to tell the same story, even if that story is complicated. Don't try to smooth over contradictions. Pick one accurate version and stick with it across both documents. Another thing nobody warns you about: the SSA examiner reviews these forms differently depending on which regional office handles the claim. Some offices treat the 1372-BK as supplementary. Others treat it as a primary source of evidence about the child's functional capacity. If you're in a jurisdiction where examiners are known to be skeptical about parental self-reporting, you might consider having the child's school counselor or treating physician complete a separate functional statement to back up what you're reporting here. That's an extra step, but it can save months of back-and-forth later.
Get the Full Details
The form download link is directly on the SSA website at ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05105.pdf. It's free, it's official, and it's the only version you should use. Third-party sites that charge for forms are not necessary and the versions they host are sometimes outdated. The SSA updates their forms without much fanfare, so always double-check the date on the PDF before you start filling it out. I've seen parents submit 2022 versions to offices that had already moved to 2024 revisions, and the mismatch caused processing pauses while the office flagged the inconsistency. There are limitations to this form and the process around it. The biggest one is that it relies entirely on parental observation. Parents are not neutral observers. They either minimize their child's abilities out of hope or, less commonly, overstate them out of frustration with the system. The SSA knows this, which is why they cross-reference with school records and medical evidence. If your child's school reports they're functioning at grade level with no restrictions while your form describes significant limitations, you should expect the examiner to push back. The workaround is straightforward: gather supporting documentation before you submit. Report cards, IEPs, therapy notes, and any evaluations from the past 12 months should be attached or ready to provide if requested. The form also doesn't capture everything. It asks about work activity, but it doesn't ask about the child's social functioning, emotional regulation, or adaptive behavior in detail. Those gaps are covered partly by the function report and the medical evidence, but there's no single form that pulls it all together. If your child's disability is complex — say, a combination of physical and cognitive limitations — you may find the 1372-BK inadequate on its own. In those cases, submitting a private occupational therapy or neuropsychological evaluation alongside the form provides the depth that the checkboxes can't capture.
Filling this out correctly usually takes about 30 to 45 minutes if you have the information organized. Going in cold, searching for school records, trying to remember exact hours — that can stretch it to two hours. Time it early in the process rather than right before a deadline. The SSA doesn't rush these, but they do eventually send requests for missing or incomplete information, and each request adds weeks to an already long timeline.
