Continued budget cuts shred Sacramento's senior safety net
By Anita Creamer
Aug. 21, 2010
Sacramento's safety net for seniors continues to fray, the result of several years' worth of city and county budget cuts.
"The system for seniors has been decimated," said Sacramento County Senior and Adult Services division chief Bernadette Lynch, "and there's been no choice about it.
"The bubble of the baby boom is still coming, and the services will not be there for them."
To help close a $55 million county budget shortfall, the county's In-Home Supportive Services program – which helps keep the low-income elderly and disabled out of nursing homes – lost 50 employees.
Layoffs included not only administrative staff but two full teams of caseworkers, leaving 8,400 of the county's 21,000 current IHSS cases without ongoing social worker support.
Some 1,500 cases still await initial intake, Lynch said, because budget cuts necessitated the consolidation of IHSS' screening unit with that of Adult Protective Services.
The result for remaining IHSS staff is that caseloads will increase from 280 to 450 apiece.
"They won't have time to do anything but assessments," Lynch said. "All the referrals we used to make to other services that helped shore up IHSS will go out the door."
Adult Protective Services, which lost its financial abuse unit to budget constraints a year ago, investigated more than 2,500 elder abuse cases over the past fiscal year, but Lynch and community advocates agree that the ongoing economic pressures on older adults and their families could easily lead to an increase in APS cases over the coming year.
"We won't see the impact of some of these cuts for a while," said Community Services Planning Council executive director Nancy Findeisen.
Sacramento 211, the free telephone referral service sponsored by the planning council, already reports an increase in calls from seniors seeking assistance, said supervisor Bob Diercks.
Meanwhile, many county-supported collaborations with nonprofits – such as the Geriatric Network, a Catholic Healthcare West program that provided free in-home mental health evaluations and services for older adults – have also fallen victim to budgetary woes.
"The resources have dried up," said Lynch.
As part of efforts to reduce the city's $50 million budget deficit, cuts to the parks and recreation department include shorter hours and fewer classes at the Hart Senior Center in midtown Sacramento.
Several years' worth of economic stress have taken a cumulative toll on programs for the city's older population, said Sylvia Fort, who manages the parks division's Older Adult Services.
Previous years have seen the elimination of the Caring Neighborhoods program, which encouraged neighbors to work together to keep seniors living safely at home, as well as a decrease in the number of sites offering day programs for people with dementia.
In the midst of the economic woes, the Meals on Wheels program, which the Asian Community Center took over from the county in July, counts as a bright spot.
Now funded by a $4.5 million Area 4 Agency on Aging grant, the program delivers weekly frozen five-packs of meals and feeds 2,000 low-income seniors daily.
Recipients are asked, but not required, to offer a donation of $2 a day.
"The number of donors is way down," said ACC chief operating officer Donna Yee. "We're realizing that seniors are feeling they have way less money to spend.
"We're really going to have to do a lot more fund development to make up for that."
SOURCE: SACBEE.COM
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