About 22,000 low-income elderly and disabled Sacramento County residents are in the middle of a fight over state finances.As part of his budget plan, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed eliminating IHSS, the state's fastest growing social services program, which pays caregivers to help the disabled and the frail elderly.
With the graying of the population, IHSS enrollment has soared, and so has its price. Founded in 1973, the program serves 400,000 Californians and will cost an estimated $1.5 billion this year.
Sacramento County spent $23.5 million on the program in 2009, up from $5.9 million in 2001.
Last year the governor also proposed eliminating the program, but a political and legal fight instead resulted in deep cuts.
With more cuts, or the program's elimination, on the horizon, administrators are scrambling to find alternatives. So far they've found none.
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California's Proposed In-Home Care Cutoff Leaves Few Options
Isn't that how it always is? The first services to get cut are the elderly.
ReplyDeleteThere's a national movement to promote home care over nursing facility "care". And you can see, it's probably not going to make it.
Maybe the legislators can take a pay cut. They already have enough for their old age - unless they get caught in the guardian trap.
ReplyDeleteThere is a flip side to this coin Betty ---
ReplyDeleteSpeaking for the law in Indiana, we are a "recipricol support" state. Parent's have a duty to raise and care for children and children have a legal duty to support and maintain aging parents. This is not to say Indiana's law works so well but the theory of responsibility among and between family is a valid principle.
Indiana also recognizes "responsible relatives" as likely owing a duty among family.
And so my point is this -- among families, what entitles a family to leave a family member dependent on public assitance while other members of the family, and perhaps the family as a whole, lives comfortably with substantial estates and luxuries of their own.
For years people have been "getting the property out of mom's name" in advance of the day mom was "put in the home" while medicaid picked up the tab and the "kids" paid little or nothing, be it money or attention.
Sure, cutting this budget is a problem .... but it is not a problem caused soley by the disabled and elderly .... or the government --- Where are these people's families????
What you're saying is true, Tim. In many cases, there is no family. But in many others, family doesn't step up to the plate becuase it interfers with their own family - their children, etc.
ReplyDeleteLife is a circle and it's only fitting that our parents took care of us when we were vulnerable and so we should do the same when it happens to them in their old age.
Legislators take a pay cut? Now that's a laugh! They're probably putting in for a raise at the same time they're cutting services!
ReplyDelete