English
Here are some examples of reports received by the County Welfare Directors Association of California (CWDA) since the new IHSS regulations went into effect November 1. Dozens of counties, along with homecare consumers, providers and advocates have asked that the state move back the implementation date because of situations like these. However, the Schwarzenegger Administration and Republican state senators have refused to allow a postponement. In Santa Cruz County, an 85-year-old woman who lives alone became ill with pneumonia. Her regular provider feared that the woman had H1N1 and was afraid to work for her while she was ill. Among this recipient’s health conditions: stroke with left side weakness, painful spasms to her face, osteoarthritis, and osteoporosis. She is authorized for 85 hours a month of domestic personal care services, including meal assistance, bathing, dressing, and medical escort. Ordinarily the recipient could find a temporary provider on her own or request short-term care through the registry. Due to all of the confusion regarding provider enrollment criteria, including what is required of current providers who accept jobs with new recipients, it was unclear whether or not a registry referral would be successful for the short-term services needed. The recipient ended up being hospitalized. In Trinity County, three new providers came in Monday to enroll and become caregivers to three different recipients. The county had to tell the caregivers that they couldn’t complete their applications because the county is not able to process background checks, which they have not received final instructions on from the state. That means these three elderly and disabled people will be alone and without care for an indefinite amount of time. In San Luis Obispo County, a woman just returned home from the hospital and does not have a caregiver in place. She is a recent double amputee and has an infection in what is left of one of her legs. She is unable to perform many tasks without assistance due to the amputation. She is not yet 65 years old and therefore cannot access many of the local senior resources, such as senior nutrition. The county is working to find an existing provider since it cannot set up a new provider. These situations will only become more common as the pool of available existing providers dwindles and the number of people needing personal care assistance continues to increase. In San Francisco County, a desperate call came in this week from a bedridden woman who was in need of a new caregiver. The county staff member told her it would take several weeks to find a new caregiver because the provider enrollment process could not be quickly completed. The woman, a former nurse, just started to cry. The only answer county staff could provide was that the woman should try to rehire her provider and there was nothing the county could do to quickly find a new caregiver. In San Francisco County, a blind man’s weekend worker had to stop working for him. The man now has no one to help him with meal preparation and clean up over the weekend. The county counselor suggested that he ask his regular weekday worker to prepare more food to get him through the weekend. There are no other options at this point given that finding a new provider will take weeks because of the still-to-be-finalized enrollment process. |
See Assemblymember Evans’ Address to Oversight Committee (video)
|
Republican State Senators Vote
It is sad that the governor’s Republican enablers in the State Senate have chosen to ignore the pleas of countless California counties as well as thousands of homecare consumers, providers and advocates by allowing the In Home Supportive Services (IHSS) implementation fiasco to continue. Their failure to support SB 69, which would have simply given the counties the time and resources needed to efficiently implement new IHSS requirements, is disgraceful. The bill had passed the Assembly 68-0 earlier in the week. Last summer, as part of the negotiated 2009-10 state budget, the legislature passed and the governor signed a new law which called for throwing thousands of low-income elderly, blind and disabled Californians out of the IHSS program. This was despite the fact that homecare saves taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars each year by keeping these consumers out of far-more-costly nursing homes or other institutions. Fortunately, a Federal Court judge has temporarily stopped this from happening because it may violate provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Olmstead Act, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. For those clients and providers who remain in the IHSS program, the budget agreement also imposed new requirements calling for fingerprinting, background checks, and other steps supposedly designed to eliminate what Republicans claim is “massive” fraud in IHSS. (Even though the governor, his legislative allies and a few ambitious district attorneys have been screaming about fraud all year, they have never provided definitive proof that it is widespread.) Unfortunately, in its headlong rush to put these new requirements in place by November 1, the Administration sent information to the counties that was contradictory, confusing, incomplete and, in some instances, possibly illegal. That is why counties all across California—urban and rural, Republican and Democratic, rich and poor—informed the Administration that they simply were unable to implement the new IHSS requirements by the Nov. 1 deadline date. Furthermore, the Administration failed in many cases to obtain feedback from affected stakeholders—county welfare departments, homecare consumers and providers—before issuing these regulations. In cases where stakeholder feedback was solicited, it generally was ignored. In most situations like this one—when new rules and regulations cannot be implemented by a deadline date—the previous rules and regulations continue in force. But in this case, the Administration has mandated that because the new rules and regulations weren’t implemented by Nov. 1st, the previous regulations DON’T apply and no new IHSS consumers can receive homecare until the new regulations are implemented . This begs the question: Is the Administration trying to achieve deeper cuts in IHSS than the Legislature voted for by encouraging this administrative chaos? Instead of working with and supporting the counties by providing them with the time, resources, and accurate information they need to effectively and efficiently implement these changes in IHSS, Senate Republicans have told the counties and thousands of our state’s most vulnerable citizens: “You haven’t implemented the changes by the deadline date? Tough luck.” They ought to be ashamed of themselves. Doug Moore is executive director of the 65,000-member UDW Homecare Providers Union, California’s only union made up entirely of homecare workers.
|
by Doug Moore
Copyright © United Domestic Workers of America. All rights reserved.
Technical comments or questions may be addressed to Webmaster
