SACRAMENTO — Loose oversight and bureaucratic inertia have allowed fraud to fester in a rapidly expanding multibillion-dollar state program that provides personal caregivers to the impoverished elderly and disabled. Hundreds of reports of scams and swindles are going without investigation.
Prosecutors and program administrators across the state say they are alarmed by the ease with which people are taking advantage of the program, In Home Supportive Services.
The program is one of the fastest-growing in state government. This year it is budgeted at $5.42 billion to provide care for some 440,000 Californians. The aim is to allow low- income and elderly incapacitated people to remain in their homes, saving the state the expense of costly nursing homes. Experts generally consider it a success.
But government funds are flowing in so quickly, with such limited oversight, that prosecutors say it is common for the state to send paychecks to scam artists claiming to be caring for someone who is dead. Or claiming to be caring for a relative or friend faking a disability. Or claiming to be providing care during the same hours they are working elsewhere.
"This program is very easy to abuse," said Michael Ramsey, the district attorney in Butte County in Northern California, which disbanded its In Home Supportive Services fraud unit in 2007 because of budget cuts. "It invites chicanery and fraud."
Some critics of the program say politics has blocked efforts to combat fraud. The program has become a steady source of revenue for the Service Employees International Union, among the most powerful interest groups in the Capitol, as well as a second union, the United Domestic Workers of America.
Under the program, people receiving care are entitled to hire whom they wish at government expense. Most hire their relatives, because family members are often the most appropriate to provide the needed round-the-clock feeding, changing, bathing and other care. Wages range from $8 to $14.68 an hour, depending on the county. Those workers are required to pay monthly union dues that total millions of dollars. The SEIU, for example, collects nearly $5 million a month from its 223,000 In Home system members.
The unions donate heavily to the campaigns of Democrats who control the Legislature and organize get-out-the-vote efforts on their behalf.
