By Steven Mikulan / Capital & Main
The 467,000 Californians who receive assistance from the state’s In-Home Supportive Services are breathing a little better, if not easier, now that a new budget has restored care cuts to the agency. The program typically assists elderly, blind and disabled people on low incomes with housework, meal preparation, personal hygiene and other services; by paying individuals through the state to perform these tasks, the care recipients are able to remain in their homes and avoid being institutionalized – which also saves taxpayers millions of dollars.
A few years ago IHSS suffered a seven-percent funding cut that Governor Jerry Brown pledged in January to restore – but without providing a specific funding stream to do so. Brown suggested that revenue for the restoration could come from either a new tax on certain health care plans or from the state’s General Fund. Officials with the state’s Department of Social Services, along with IHSS advocates in both the state Senate and Assembly, assured the agency’s clients that it was a done deal that the seven percent cut would be funded, somehow.
But IHSS clients, and the workers who provide their care for $9.65 an hour, were not entirely sold on “somehow,” and waged a vigorous campaign in the Capitol for the restoration. Governor Brown, after all, had a track record of denying IHSS workers paid overtime, as well as paid sick leave, and his nonchalant attitude toward making legislators grapple with exactly how to find the estimated $226 million needed to restore the cuts did not allay fears that IHSS would once more be the odd man out in the final budget settlement.
By the legally mandated June 15 deadline, however, the Legislature passed a budget that would ensure restoration of the seven-percent cut – for one year. The final budget agreed to by Brown slashed $2 billion of spending for other programs, but left the IHSS restoration intact.
A permanent fix will depend on Sacramento enacting a new managed-care tax. While unions representing the IHSS workers rejoiced over the news, they made it clear that more work lies ahead to obtain a lasting solution.
The inability of the Legislature and Governor to iron out such a long-term solution today might be understandable on the federal level, where the Republican-controlled Congress is locked in never-ending combat with a Democratic President. But why this should be in California, where a liberal party and a chief executive call all the legislative shots, remains a mystery. Or perhaps not. Individuals familiar with the Governor’s views on IHSS, and who wish to remain anonymous, have told Capital & Main that Brown is philosophically opposed to paying family members to care for close relatives. In fact, Brown’s administration proposed in 2011 and 2012 to eliminate IHSS services for people who live with family members.
For their part legislators are quite happy, as political writer Anthony York observed on KQED’s California Politics podcast, to appear as the “good cop” who expands social services – knowing full well that it’s penny-pinching “bad cop” Jerry Brown who will chop these programs once he gets their version of the budget. The end result has left the most vulnerable Californians uncertain about their future, even as a “silver tsunami” of retirees is being forecast to arrive within the next five years, creating even greater urgency for a solution that extends beyond the next budget cycle.
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As a close friend (but not a family member) of someone who is fully disabled from a stroke, IHSS is a godsend. She wouldn’t be able to stay in her home without it. And staying in her home is far superior in terms of her lifestyle, comfort and care than being in a nursing home where she was for a while. Nursing homes don’t have the medical expertise; there was no doctor onsite. The nurses didn’t have a clue that her blood pressure had fallen to 80/40 precipitating another stroke. I insisted that she be taken to the hospital where she got the medical care and expertise she needed.
They just have nurses and CNAs (they’re the ones that deal with diaper changes etc)at nursing homes. They do their jobs competently enough, but you have to be there to be an advocate for the patient because they don’t always come when called, and they don’t take overall responsibility for the patient.
A combination of family and paid caregiver care is the best solution. The patient can be near her pet(s) in the home. She misses them at a nursing home. If it is an elderly married couple, you can’t expect the disabled one to be completely cared for by the other who just happens to be a family member. If Jerry Brown gets rid of IHSS and expects the family member to take care of her, he is creating an impossible situation. They would have to be divorced in order for the disabled person to be eligible. And you can’t expect a son or daughter to care for an elderly disabled person without being paid the same as a nonrelated caregiver. Caregiving is a very difficult job.
If the state is saving money by keeping elderly disabled people in their homes, they have to pay for caregivers. The IHSS caregivers make less than $10. an hour. They aren’t getting rich, and they are a valuable resource. They deserve much more than that, and they end up doing far more than the simple housekeeping tasks that they are supposedly being paid to do.
I’m a caregiver. I take care of my 83 year old mom who has severe dementia. She can’t be left alone. She’s fallen 2 times. First time she broke her clavicle, second time she fell on her face on her night stand. Both times she had to go to rehab for 21 days after being hospitalized. Both events cost $26,000- just for the rehab, thats $51 per hour. I get paid $9.85. I “alloted” 121 hours a month. If she were in a state nursing hime it would costnthe state $37,000 per month. I get paid $1200. I do the same thing they did. I bathe her. I change her diaper. I cook her meals. I have to drive her to dialysis 3 times a week. I dispence her meds. I talk to her doctors. I calm her at night when her memory transports her back to when she was 8 years old. For a guy who studied the bible he sure as hell doesn’t practice what he read. I wasn’t asked to take on this role. I didn’t want to take on this role. I wasn’t given a choice. I have no private life. If the governor is so opposed to taking care of our parents I’ll be more that happy to drop my mom off at his house, I’m sure he has more than enought means to take care of her.