Local adult day health care centers fight to stay open
Impending closures of ADHCs statewide cast a dark shadow on friendship, community and a sense of independence for disabled people
By Paul Sisolak 02/18/2010
On a typical day at the Ventura County Adult Day Health Care center, each room is bustling with a different kind of activity: bingo in one, exercise and singalongs in another, physical and cognitive therapy in a third. This week, the energy remains upbeat and infectious even though the word spreading around sounds out a dire message.
“They better not!” exclaims Darcell Jordan, when asked for her reaction to news that state officials, due to more extreme budget cuts, may shut down 327 ADHCs across the state due to funding cuts to Medi-Cal. The Oxnard facility on Lombard Street is one of them.
Jordan, a Ventura woman who is wheelchair-bound from a 1991 head injury, would have nowhere else to go for physical therapy if this happens. But more important to her are the close interpersonal connections she would lose.
“This is my life here,” she says. “These are my friends. I don’t know anybody (else). This is my family.”
Others at the center, even those with limited speech capabilities, carefully articulated the same sentiment. “I have family and friends” at the center, says Jodi Frazier, 24, who’s come here for therapy since a major car accident left her physically and mentally impaired.
Administrators, therapists and staff are anxiously counting down to Monday, when a formal announcement on the future of California’s ADHCs is expected. They’re hoping that mercy from the governor’s office, or at least some sort of compromise, can be had to save the center, opened just eight years ago.
For the sake of the state budget, numbers indicate that closing down the centers — more victims to the fiscal chopping block that include battered women’s shelters, teacher layoffs and other state-funded programs — will provide a savings of more than $134 million.
Here in Oxnard, it also means that more than 160 low-income patients, coping with anything from psychological disorders, alcoholism, paralysis or old age, will be displaced back to their homes across Ventura County with no real form of supervised daytime care. If the center were to close, according to Genny Da Roza, the center’s program director, it would have no means to remain open because more than 96 percent of its visitors rely on Medi-Cal benefits to attend. Only four people attend the center through private pay.
Medi-Cal, she said, covers the daily costs of breakfast, lunch and all professional services at the Oxnard center: $76 per person.
Da Roza, her staff, and representatives in Sacramento with the California Association for Adult Day Services (CAADS) all maintain that closing down ADHCs statewide would prove pointless because their patrons would be forced to utilize, and overcrowd, other hospitals and skilled nursing and emergency care facilities, which would end up bearing the brunt of more than $221 million in the same Medi-Cal costs — $89 million more than what Gov. Schwarzenegger initially proposed to save.
Additionally, CAADS estimates that closures of adult health care centers across California stands to generate a loss of as much as $216 million in federal matching funds, and the elimination of more than 7,600 jobs. Thirty-five of those positions are at the Oxnard center, from social workers to speech therapists and drivers. It’ll also place an added burden on the working members of patients’ families, who may need to take time off from work, or leave their jobs altogether, because their relatives have no place to go for rehabilitation and care.
Most importantly, though, is grave worry over the day-to-day welfare and well-being of ADHC patients. Without regular activity, according to Da Roza, depression and atrophy set in, and the health implications could prove risky, maybe fatal.
“The main concern is for these people,” she states. “The end result is, they would be institutionalized, or go home and sit and look at the TV all day. Their quality of life is poor … I really believe we give them purpose and meaning.”
Last month, an extensive letter-writing campaign was carried out by Da Roza, Farzana Adatia (an assistant administrator at the Oxnard center) and patients with their family members, all urging state officials to rethink closing the adult day care centers. The letters, some of them handwritten, were delivered to the state capitol in Sacramento.
Da Roza and staff hope that an agreement can be reached with the state, allowing the care center to remain open, even if it means facilities are scaled back slightly, or requirements are made more stringent.
According to CAADS data, the state legislature had lately rejected the closure of adult day health care centers, instead proposing (through an assembly bill) a tightening of patient eligibility standards, from five points of criteria to eight.
The alternative, while perhaps salvaging the center, would mean fewer people meeting the minimum criteria.
Among those existing criteria, according to the center’s Web site, VCADHC.com, participants in the program must be 18 or older, require nursing care supervision and assistance in performing self-care activities, and must need supervision during the daytime hours for their own safety.
Da Roza, on Tuesday, said she was unsure of an exact date when the center would need to be closed and vacant, but estimated that the county ADHC would have until June 1 to notify family members of patients. The facility, which is outfitted with standard medical equipment, is located near St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard.
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Should anyone have any questions, comments, or concerns about this article or the current legislative move, feel free to contact Ventura County Adult Day Helath Care and ask to speak to someone in social services. If you or someone you know is interested in services at Ventura County Adult Day Health Care, feel free to stop by our facility or call to talk to someone in social services. Ventura County Adult Day Health Care is open Monday through Friday, from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm. We are located at 1700 N. Lombard Ave, Suite 150, Oxnard, CA 93030. We can be reached it at 805.278.4321.
Chevron gouged $24 billions in excessive profits in 2008, as per www.tyrannyofoil.com. Schwarzenegger should put an excessive profits tax on these profits, instead of protecting the oil corporations from fair taxation, then, there would be sufficient public funds for all the vulnerable, people programs. Big business lost the fight to eliminate domestic violence funding, so now they are coming back with a vengeance. There is no funding provision for battered women shelters in the proposed budget. Schwarzee picks on the most vulnerable, and not on corporate "deadbeats."