Bernadette Walton is a Sacramento resident who is an in-home support service worker for her daughter. She provides for her 11-year-old daughter, who is autistic and needs support at home.

Walton said her daughter needs help with everyday living — hygiene, grooming, schoolwork, and life skills. 

According to Walton, she used to work as a behavior technician, going into homes and working with children like her daughter. One day, her doctor said that her daughter needed her more at home, and that’s when she learned about the In-Home Supportive Services program.

The IHSS program assists people with disabilities and low-income individuals 65 or older, who are enrolled in Medi-Cal. Depending on the recipients’ needs, the providers help with housework, personal care services, meal preparation, and more. 

“I never knew that parents could be compensated for all the things that they do within the home for their child, I just do it as a mother,” Walton said of caring for her daughter, who is high-needs. “That’s something that, as a mother, you have to do. I don’t like to call it a job, but it is a job. It is a service that I provide.”

Walton is one of the more than 500,000 IHSS workers in California who could be affected by budget cuts within the Medi-Cal program from Governor Gavin Newsom’s May Revision. The state is facing a $12 billion budget deficit. 

The proposed revision for the program would reduce and cap provider overtime and travel hours at 50 hours a week, which is currently 66 hours. According to the governor’s office, the proposal will result in a reduction of $707.5 million per year.

The governor is also proposing to end the program for undocumented immigrants.

If the proposed budget were to pass, Walton said that without the overtime she would be compensated for, she would have to find another worker skilled enough to care for her daughter. 

“That would be terrible,” Walton said. “It’ll be kind of like a two fold thing: Because for me, of course, I would have to go back to work, but that would take me out of the home and much needed hours that I am in the home providing this needed care for my child.”

What the unions feel

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 2015 is a statewide local union representing home care workers in 37 California counties, representing over 700,000 long-term care workers in California.

President of SEIU Local 2015, Arnulfo De La Cruz, wrote in a statement that the proposed cuts to IHSS and Medi-Cal are unacceptable, shortsighted and dangerous.

“This May Revise sends the wrong message,” De La Cruz stated. “It targets older adults, those with disabilities, immigrants, long-term care workers (who make up the largest low-wage workforce in the state), and low-income families; it continues to hollow out the middle class and erode trust in government.”

SEIU’s policy and research director, Brandi Wolf, said the union strongly opposes the proposals to cap the work week and reinstate the Medi-Cal asset test.

Limiting the work hours from 66 to 50 would result in a total of 16 hours a week and 64 hours a month that the provider would not be compensated for, according to Wolf. That would impact the consumer, who would now have to find another provider to make up those hours.

Wolf said the proposed workweek limits could have huge implications for workers and the people they care for—the consumers.
 
“About 70% of home care workers are some sort of familial relation to their consumers,” Wolf said. “And as you can imagine, somebody who has assessed those maximum number of hours is somebody that has the highest level of care needed, and now you are disrupting their care by requiring that they go find another provider.”

Walton said she would probably have the amount of income be gone and she would have to find another job and 16 hours in a row to make up for it.

“I couldn’t imagine my daughter being without me for 16 hours,” Walton said. “It would probably even affect my husband who may even need to take off days to be there if we didn’t find anyone. That would probably affect his ability to work as well.”

If a provider loses 64 hours a month of pay, it could potentially lead to becoming unhoused or institutionalized, Wolf said.

“That is the difference between being able to pay rent and not pay rent,” Wolf said. “So we have very serious concerns about what will happen to providers and their ability to sustain any quality of life in being able to meet.”

Walton said the money she receives from the IHSS program helps pay everything from bills to groceries. She said the cuts would be detrimental to her because she and her husband are still living paycheck to paycheck.

“We would really be struggling and probably have to move out of the county,” Walton said. “I came from Silicon Valley, so I already got pushed out from the economy and the high price of living. So since we moved to Sacramento, we would probably end up losing our house.” 

According to Wolf, this is already a recruitment and retention challenge in the workforce.

“These cuts only serve to further exacerbate the workforce shortage and the issue with trying to find a provider to provide the hours to the consumers,” Wolf said.

What’s next

Newsom also wants to reinstate the Medi-Cal asset test, which was eliminated last year. The test determines eligibility for the Medi-Cal and IHSS programs. 

Single individuals will lose access to Medi-Cal if they have $2,000 in their bank account or a married couple with $3,000.

“We’ve heard numbers from the Department of Health Care Services that the cut would automatically kick about 112,000 people off Medi-Cal,” Walton said. “Not to mention how many there will no longer be eligible going forward because of the reinstatement of the asset limit test.”

Walton said that SEIU focuses on fighting back against the budget cuts.

“These are programs that have been under attack during budget cuts before, and we have brought the collective power of our workforce together to fight back and have largely been successful,” Wolf said. “So that’s really where our focus is right now.”

Walton said the message she would give to policymakers if she could is that they should think of their constituents as people who need support.

“I’d want them to just think about us as human beings who need care, and they deserve that type of care,” Walton said. “If the county and the state is going to take those budget cuts, I think it would be a little inhumane. You’re looking at them as not human beings anymore. You just look at them as numbers.” 

The legislature will vote on a final budget next month.

Keyshawn Davis is a communities reporter at CapRadio. CapRadio is a partner of The Intersection and CVJC.