In Home Support Services

Well, I was told by an IHSS Manager that IHSS is a federally funded program. Yeah, ok... They are a Medi-Cal program that is in fact federally funded. So I did some digging and found out that (supposedly) an equivalent of IHSS is only available in 10 states. But remember, bad politics has a habit of ruining good things, and there is always an overabundance of that around, so these programs can go away at any moment...

  1. California: The In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program.
  2. Illinois: The Community Care Program (CCP).
  3. Michigan: The MI Choice Waiver.
  4. Minnesota: The Consumer Support Grant (CSG) program.
  5. New Jersey: The Personal Preference Program (PPP).
  6. New York: The Consumer-Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP).
  7. Ohio: The PASSPORT program.
  8. Oregon: The Aged and Disabled Medicaid Waiver.
  9. Pennsylvania: The Aging Waiver program.
  10. Washington: The Medicaid Alternative Care (MAC) program.
 
Tennessee has a similar program called ā€œHCBSā€and yes, it could come to an end thanks to a change in federal policies.

Home & Community Based Services (HCBS)

But to answer the original question, no I do not. I canā€™t even find someone affordable/reliable/and does good work to help with housework. Furthermore, I have seen too many local news snippets about home health care persons who were caught stealing from the person they were ā€œcaring forā€. If you can think of it, they were stealing it.
 
Imogene said:
Furthermore, I have seen too many local news snippets about home health care persons who were caught stealing from the person they were ā€œcaring forā€. If you can think of it, they were stealing it.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's what I was talking about when I said "bad politics has a habit of ruining good things", but that was only half of what I was going to say and got sidetracked and forgot. I has senior moments, don'cha know...

So anyway, this is what I was going to post with the part I did post earlier:

These were workers we had in Eureka, California over the 10 years between 2012 to 2022.
Moonie - A cute hippie chick (her words, not mine) who was nice to talk to, even if she was in orbit, but we hired her to clean the house. We had to hire someone else because wasn't real keen on working. From my desk chair I could see a reflection of her washing dishes in the kitchen on the door of the microwave. Quite often, she would just be standing there, water running, playing with her fingernails. Maybe that had something to do with her always smelling like a pot farm.

Crystal - A late 20's Church Lady type. (Think Dana Carvey's SNL Church Lady come to life.) She made us laugh and did a moderately good job. However, she was notoriously late. She wore these long granny dresses as she called them, that dragged the floor. I told her "It would be better if you used a broom to sweep."

Our #2 Son - Never hire family. Ever.

Chris - A friend of #2 Son - Never hire family or their friends.

Jessica - A spoiled rich Daddy's girl who Daddy cut off, that would take advantage of anyone she could. She lasted about two weeks.

Brittany - A Blonde in every sense. Blonde hair, blonde personality, blonde work skills, needed a baby sitter and couldn't find one. She worked for us for about a year. At her house, not ours, she would make dinner, eat, and leave whatever was left on the table for breakfast. I asked her, "Haven't you ever heard of food poisoning? Ok, so you can eat like you dug something out of a dumpster if you like, but Please Don't be feeding anything that's been out of the fridge for longer than an hour to your kids..."

Trish - She worked 14 hours over two days and quit. She said our house made her claustrophobic. Well, that one one reason why we hired her. To remove the obstacle course because it was making me claustrophobic.

Adam - The first of the IHSS Program Scammers. This guy was a real piece of work. He had over a dozen clients, all disabled seniors, and was billing IHSS for 66 hours a week, the maximum of 40 hours a week with 26 hours of overtime. $20 an hour for 40 hours is $800 a week, plus 26 hours at $30 an hour is $780. So that was a gross of $1,580 a week, $6,941.40 a month, a whopping $82,160 a year, and he was actually only working about a third of the time. He would say "I'm gonna take five," and not come back for an hour.

After I caught him threatening Cindy for not signing off of a time card, I fired him. He had worked for us about two months. When I talked to our IHSS case manager, she said she could remove his name from their available workers list, but she couldn't do anything else. He could still work for IHSS. Somebody along the way turned him in to Sacramento and he's currently doing time for Fraud in some California prison. Which made my day when I heard about it. People like him pushed the state to change their time cards into electronic form and you have log in and out between clients. No more fudged time cards for "working" the same hours in a day.

Moved to Edison, California in 2023.
Leaha - She was a good worker, but she clearly didn't understand how IHSS works. When I hired her, I told her that she would be putting 2/3's of her hours on my son's account and 1/3 on mine. She said she understood. But when she submitted her "time cards", she put all of her hours on both. I told her that wasn't going to fly, she doesn't get $20 an hour from each of us for the time she worked. She argued with me about so I just told "This isn't going to work" and let her go. Another two week run.

I reported that I let her go and why to IHSS, and the next day someone called to talk to me about her complaint against me for not paying her. I laughed and said "She filed a complaint?" and told them what she wanted me to do. I told her no, that I would sign off on 30 hours on my sons account and 10 on mine, but I would not agree to 40 hours each, a total of 80 hours, when she only worked a total of 40 hours. I told her the same thing I told Adam in Eureka, I will not commit fraud against the State of California for you. IHSS paid her for 40 hours. Was she another IHSS Program Scammer or another ditzy blonde?

Arthur - I interviewed him, hired him, set every thing up wiIHSS for him to bill hours, but he never came to work. I never head from him again.

Kim - She was the last one. She had recently had twins and had a bad case of postpartum depression. She either did a "no show, no call", she sat and cried for the whole time she was here and when she did work her performance was not all that great. I gave her every chance I possibly could, but it just didn't work out. She eventually just stopped coming, and she never even posted her last 10 hours.

I called her several times, and got no answer so I eventually gave up. I called her just before the three month limit on turning in time cards was about to expire that 10 hours at $20 is $200, and got a message that her account had been suspended. I have no idea what that means. Did she fail to pay the phone bill? Did she cancel it? Did she do something stupid? I have no clue...

So I gave up on IHSS. In my opinion, it's great for liars, thieves and scammers, not so good for the people need it most of the time. Being the kind of person that I am, I worried about some of those people more than they did about themselves. I still think about Kim's babies...
 
@Axel Slingerland holy crow, you have a lot more patience than I havešŸ˜‡. I would have given up after Helper #3.

Your story almost sounds like a Made For TV Movie that thankfully has had a good ending. It would have been great if just one of those people would have had some ethics and moral fiber, but it seems to be the way of the younger world these daysšŸ˜¢šŸ˜¢
 
I just checked my email and I got a reply from our current case manager. I had asked her if I could be my son's worker, since we can't find one and I end up doing everything. She said that I could as long as I can pass the background check. Passing it isn't the problem, it's paying for it. It was $45 up in Eureka. It could be more or less here.

Under the SSA Retirement Program rules (according to Dr. Ed Weir) at 69, since I am on SSA Full Retirement, there no resource or income limits. If you have SSI it's different, and I am having trouble finding out what the max. income limit is for SSI, before they start deducting from your check.

There are a couple of pertinent rules. If I were to make enough that they would suspend my SSI, I would still have the same amount. But with no resource limit after Full Retirement age, if I were to work just 10 hours at the current rate for IHSS, $22 a hour, that would be a gross of $220 a week. Multiply that by 4.33 weeks (that's IHSSs description of a month) that would be $952 a month.

I read somewhere that you might need to earn $1,620 a month to cancel out SSI benefits. I could do that if I worked 20 hours and taxes were taken out. And $1904 a month gross plus my retirement should give enough money to not have to pay 52% of our income just to pay the rent. However, again I read somewhere and I don't recall where, that if you only make a little money, they might not deduct anything. I am trying find the real story about that as well.

But right now I'm running on two hours of sleep and it's only about our midnight. (Your Noon...) I'm usually up until at least 2:00 or 3:00p. Just like I would if I was a day person. I'd stay up until 2:00 or 3:00a every night.

It's time for me to go back to bed. Nighty night, Y'all! šŸ„“
 
@Axel Slingerhand, thank you for taking the time to outline all you have been through re: in home help. It is really sad there is no reliable system for seniors to have more assistance in the home. The benefit of such are so important.
 
Imogene said:
Tennessee has a similar program called ā€œHCBSā€and yes, it could come to an end thanks to a change in federal policies.

Home & Community Based Services (HCBS)

But to answer the original question, no I do not. I canā€™t even find someone affordable/reliable/and does good work to help with housework. Furthermore, I have seen too many local news snippets about home health care persons who were caught stealing from the person they were ā€œcaring forā€. If you can think of it, they were stealing it.
Click to expand...
I've heard stories about lazy homemakers, thieving homemakers as well as about home health aides who were a Godsend. First the thief. My BFF's father had a home health aide who thought he was slick. He forged my BFF's father's check and attempted to cash it at a local bank. What he did not know was that her father had been the well known, highly respected chief of police in their town. He was arrested immediately.

Lazy...my sister's aunt (we are half siblings) had a home health aide who didn't bathe and dress her aunt by mid day. My sister was a stickler about such things and fired her.

Godsend...one of my cousin's had a home health aide for her mother, who by then was in her nineties. She said the woman took wonderful. When my sister and I visited, we got the sense that she was. My sister and the cousin needing care had been best friends and that cousin played an important part in me finding my sister and "new family".

I've also seen reports about abusive aides. There was a viral video of a grandmother who was physically assaulted and knocked out of her wheelchair. Thankfully her granddaughter had installed a nanny cam and saw the footage. As the saying goes "Her a*s would have been mine" if she had done those things to my mother or grandmother! She'd be happy to be carted off to jail by the time I got done with her.

I told my son to try get home care for me if feasible, should I become disabled, but made him aware that he'd have to be vigilant, pop in and have others pop in at various times of the day (one of my neighbors has my key). He said he would definitely install hidden cameras in here.
 
"What'cha gonna do? What'cha gonna do when they come for you!"

What's even more funny is sitting in a restaurant and about 20 feet away are four cops, two California Highway Patrol officers, and two Richmond, California city cops, talking about how realistic TV cop shows are. Is there anything that is really accurate about crime dramas?
 

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