Budget Impasse Worries Home-Care Recipients : Social services: As the state’s unpaid bills mount, many of the poor and elderly fear their last days will be spent in convalescent homes.

For home-care provider Bette Bendorf, the political fight in Sacramento over control of the state budget hit home last week when one of her aged clients took her hand as she was leaving and cried, afraid that Bendorf might never return.

As one of 5,000 state home-care providers who didn’t get a paycheck this month because lawmakers have failed to pass a budget, Bendorf is haunted by the 96-year-old widow’s fear that without Bendorf’s help she will die in a nursing home.

As the budget impasse between the Legislature and Gov. George Deukmejian continues in its second week and the backlog of the state’s unpaid bills mounts, the prospect of “being institutionalized” creeps more and more often into the conversations between Bendorf and her dozen clients in Huntington Beach, most of whom are elderly and all of whom are poor.

“I think it’s just terrible what they’re doing,” Bendorf said of the lawmakers’ inability to strike a compromise. “The people we take care of are very nervous. They’re very upset about it. They’re worried if were going to continue working . . . .

“A lot of them would just go to a convalescent home. The convalescent home is more or less the last stage of your life to most people. You just go to bed and you die there. There’s no more living.”

Earlier this week, the Senate passed a $52.5-billion spending plan that included $1.3 billion in tax and fee increases. Deukmejian, however, wants a $53.8-billion budget and has said he will oppose any plan that incorporates tax and fee increases.

Orange County officials said this week that county government faces no immediate cash crisis as a result of the state budget impasse. The county has $78 million in cash on hand. But the county’s director of social services, Larry Leaman, said he fears that the state’s failure to pay its bills might force many of the county’s home-care providers to quit to find a more secure livelihood.

Bendorf, 37, and a single parent, has worked as a home-care provider with her mother, who is 56 and also named Betty for the past five years. They share an apartment in Huntington Beach width the younger woman’s 6-year-old son.

Like most state-paid home-care providers, Bendorf and her mother are paid minimum wage and together receive about $2,000 a month. They are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, she said. They provide basic nursing care and physical therapy for some clients. For others they run errands, such as buying their groceries or taking them to the doctor.

Bendorf and her mother are usually paid twice a month but they didn’t get their first check for July and are not expecting to receive the second, which usually comes around the 15th. For the first time in seven years, Bendorf said, they did not make their rent payment and owe a $30 late fee. They are also delinquent on their utility bills.

“I’ve had to call my utilities and get an extension on my bills,” Bendorf said. “I told them the governor didn’t sign the budget so I don’t get paid and that as soon as I get paid I’ll pay them. They’ve been very nice about it, but how long is your landlord going to be nice?”

Then shifting to worries about her clients Bendorf added: “I can’t walk out on people that need help like that. I really don’t know what to do.”

Bendorf’s mother echoes the concerns of her daughter, saying she does not know how long they can stave off the bill collectors or the fears of their clients.

“I told them I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Bendorf’s mother said. “It really throws some of the people for a loop.”