Criticism of State Over Care Homes Called Unfair

The state Little Hoover Commission has been overzealous and unfair in criticizing the Deukmejian Administration for its regulation of 22,000 privately run board-and-care homes, the official who runs the licensing program claimed Friday.

Clearly stung by the watchdog commission’s barbed criticism, Linda S. McMahon, director of the state Department of Social Services, pointed to statistics showing that the state has indeed increased its enforcement efforts since Gov. George Deukmejian took office two years ago.

In 1984, she said, the department shut down 350 board-and-care homes. That represented a substantial increase from 1983, when only 128 homes lost their licenses. In 1982, before Deukmejian took office, only 78 homes were closed.

‘We Are Making Progress’

“In their zeal to create an atmosphere where additional legislation would go through, they (commission members and staff) ignored the fact or overlooked the fact that we are making progress,” McMahon said in an interview. “I think they tended to blow some things out of proportion. . . . A lot of the complaints are old complaints.”

She denied allegations that her staff has failed to respond promptly to complaints about specific facilities. But she said she lacked detailed knowledge about complaints aired at a Little Hoover Commission hearing in January. “We’re required by law to respond to complaints within 10 days and we do that,” she said.

McMahon was reacting to a new round of criticism from the commission, which for several years has been objecting to conditions in many of the state’s board-and-care homes--facilities that house elderly, retarded and mentally ill individuals who are too incapacitated to live independently but not sick enough to require a nursing home or hospital. The department is responsible for inspecting and licensing the homes.

On Thursday, the commission unveiled a package of bills intended to correct problems in the regulation of the homes. The bills would triple the fines for facilities that repeatedly violate state standards, allow local police to cite unlicensed homes and speed up closure of substandard facilities.

And in a letter directed to Deukmejian, the commission chairman, Nathan Shapell, complained that the Administration has not done enough to improve the squalid conditions that continue to exist in many of the homes.

Examples Cited

In the letter, Shapell referred to several examples of the state’s failure to respond adequately to complaints. In one case, a facility was given 30 days to correct a failure to have enough food on hand for its residents. In another case, state inspectors cited a home for serious fire safety violations but eventually waived all fines.

These and other recent examples were documented in detail at the commission’s January public hearing. But McMahon and her staff said that the commission did not turn over the information to the department’s community care licensing division, and the state agency has not been able to identify the individual cases.

In his letter, Shapell also repeated allegations that home operators have been tipped off ahead of time about inspections. He noted that one inspector had been fired for doing so.

McMahon said that inspections are intended to be unannounced and “to the extent that when you are dealing with human beings you can control their activities, we are doing that. . . . We are not tipping people off.”