California seniors, disabled people face severe cuts in services

From The Record Searchlight in Redding, Calif. In the picture, Claire "Betty" Berg, left, talks with her home health care worker, Mona Ohrt, on Wednesday at Berg's home in Redding. "I think this service is a very needed thing. Cutting the funding on programs like these will put seniors in our area in jeopardy," Berg said.

Claire "Betty" Berg, 76, has been using a wheelchair for seven years after two hip surgeries and a bad fall left her with a leg pieced together with metal and little strength left in her core.

She can't walk, she can't carry anything, she can't cook for herself and she can't even sleep in her own bed because after spending so much time in a wheelchair, it's too painful to stretch out to sleep flat. She said she pretty much lives in her cozy dark blue recliner, spending time talking on the phone, watching TV and making crafts. But at least she's home, she said.

Berg is able to continue living in a quiet east Redding mobile home park because of the help she receives through Shasta County's In Home Support Services (IHSS). Almost every day for the past six years, Mona Ohrt, 54, has come to help Berg with such tasks as bathing, cooking and shopping for groceries.

But a proposed cut in the state budget could eliminate the help Berg and more than 2,000 other Shasta County residents receive through IHSS.

Jim Livingston, program manager for Adult Services, said there are two cuts proposed for IHSS. Both involve the Functional Index (FI) rating, which is a complex ranking of a person's physical ability to complete tasks such as laundry, meal preparation, bathing, grooming, eating and mobility. The index starts at one and goes to five, with five ascribed to the most physically disabled.

An average of 120 or so incoming clients are evaluated each month by the service's four intake case workers, said Timothy Shell, supervisor of IHSS. The case workers visit clients' homes and evaluate their needs as they go through daily activities, he said. Part of the evaluation process is the FI rating.

The first proposed cut would eliminate people with an FI of less than two, which would cut services to 519 clients, Livingston said.

"The most aggressive cut to the program that's been presented is the (elimination of people with an) FI of less than four," he said.

The second cut would eliminate 86 percent of the service's case load.

"It's kind of scary," he said.

Some cuts have already been implemented to the program.

As she sits in her chair wearing a blue T-shirt with black shorts and round white earrings, Berg said she used to be allocated enough to pay Ohrt to come help her for 161 hours a month. That's been reduced to 113 hours, which both say is not enough.

"They expect you to go shopping in 30 minutes," Ohrt said from the kitchen entrance.

"You can't even find a place to park in 30 minutes," Berg added. "When it comes to shopping, it's absolutely ludicrous to think that somebody can shop on a two-week basis in 30 minutes."

Ohrt said she works full time at a psychiatric facility in Redding but comes to Berg's house early in the morning and every night to help with basic tasks.

Without the help, Berg, a mother of two, grandmother of six and great-grandmother of six more, said she would probably be forced into a nursing facility - which comes with a much higher price tag than IHSS and one most seniors like her can't afford.

Berg, who ran many of her own businesses throughout her life, said she doesn't think it's right that seniors, who make up almost half of the IHSS clients, are bearing the brunt of so many cuts when they worked all their lives paying into a system they expected would provide for them in their old age.

"We have to worry every day whether we'll get food in our mouths," she said. "I can name people in this park that their incomes are so low they buy cat tuna to eat. That's a shame. And this man (Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger) knows nothing of that."

Assistance to IHSS clients in Shasta County is funded on three levels: federal, state and county. Workers like Ohrt are paid $8.85 an hour as established by the IHSS workers union, which is composed of 50 percent federal funds, 32.5 percent state funds and 17.5 percent county funds, Shell said.

The whole point of IHSS is to ensure that people who are unsafe at home and at risk for needing placement in a nursing facility are given a chance to stay home, which saves money, he said.

"It goes without saying that staying in one's home is cheaper than going into a nursing facility," he said.

The state pays about $287 a month for a client receiving 100 hours of care a month.

Berg said some nursing facilities cost up to $6,000 a month, and if Medi-Cal eligible, the burden of that bill falls on the state and federal government.

"The governor is cutting his nose off to spite his face," she said.

Berg remembers advocate groups in the '60s and '70s who fought for their causes and banded together to make their voices heard. That's what seniors today need, she said.

"Now we are without representation," she said. "We're trying very hard to get an organization here for senior citizens. A lot of them don't know what's available to them. They think, what can I do? I'm only one person."

Berg said she is working with a senior citizen group based in Oakland, the California Alliance for Retired Americans, to establish a Care Action Team in Shasta County. Seniors need to know they can speak up and ask for help, she said.

The alliance has more than 3 million members nationally and 800,000 in the state.

"We have an abundance of retired people coming in more and more from the south and they need to be informed about what is available and collectively form some kind of action group to assist seniors so we have the power to be heard," she said.

Berg, who sits on IHSS's board, said she believes the 70-plus million aging baby boomers will only exacerbate the situation in which she and other seniors find themselves. At a time when programs are shrinking and benefits are lost, things will only get worse, she said.

"It's like a snowball," she said. "The snowball starts at the top of the hill and as long as it's rolling down it's picking up more speed and more snow. That's going to happen."