The hearings in a joint Human Services Committee meeting were called after more than a dozen elderly, disabled and mentally ill people were found abandoned for two days at a residential care facility in Castro Valley.
The Valley Springs Manor lost its license from the state.The owner and all but three workers left.
"This is not working properly," said Will Lightbourne, the director of the Department of Social Services. "We are seeing misses that shouldn't be there."
Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed giving the Department of Social Services an additional $7.5 million in the upcoming budget and hiring more than 70 people, including investigators, to visit facilities.
As things currently stand, senior homes are only inspected once every five years and subject to periodic random inspections.
Advocates for the elderly say residential care facilities should be inspected more frequently than day care centers.
"They don't go home to their parents at night," said Patricia McGinnis, the director of the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform. "They don't have frequent visitors. And they are often very frail and dependent."
Advocates are also asking lawmakers to change the penalties for caregivers who break the law.
"Whether it's imminent danger or death or serious bodily harm -- whether (it's) absolute neglect, it doesn't matter. The most you're going to get fined is just $150."
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Lawmakers Ask How Social Services Can Better Monitor Care Homes
Watch the Hearing
Good first step, now let's have action!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad some good has come out of that awful event.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, in Virginia, the Department for the Aging, the Virginia Public Guardian and Conservator Advisory Board, and Jewish Family Service of Tidewater reacted to reports about the appalling conditions in the six dangerous, disgusting adult homes with 400 people run by the notorious Scott Schuett by ridiculously claiming that "it is impossible to operate these facilities without a single violation."
ReplyDeleteA single violation? In fact, Scott Schuett holds the all-time record for the most violations of any assisted living operator, ever, at any time in Virginia history. None of which matters to these public officials, who ignore their responsibility to protect these forgotten, endangered incapacitated people.
Ask any question, any question at all, and DARS will give you the same policy answer: expand the public guardianship programs. Put more people under guardianship.
DARS is not interested in ensuring BETTER guardianship, to the point that it deliberately sweeps evidence of poor decision-making, horrible care, and egregious violations of the law and court orders by Jewish Family Service of Tidewater and Catholic Charities of Eastern Virginia under a very large rug.
You can rewrite the law in any way you want. Our public agencies and public guardianship programs must be forced to OBEY the law.