Demonstrators Rally for In-Home Care Services

More than 100 people with disabilities, elderly residents and home-care workers demonstrated Thursday to pressure Gov. Pete Wilson to sign a $25-million bill to provide in-home nursing care services.

Demonstrating in front of the Ronald Reagan State Building on Spring Street, the demonstrators said that the recently passed state budget, even with a $4-billion surplus available, ignores home nursing care.

Activist Nancy Becker Kennedy--who is wheelchair-bound--said, “In-home care is a way for people to maintain their dignity--and it’s more cost effective than nursing homes.”

Without the funding, she said, many patients will go without essential care.

In addition, she hopes that the funding will improve the quality of service by attendants, who she said “work sweatshop wages with no benefits.”

Some attendants work around the clock--preparing meals, bathing patients, fixing respirators and similar tasks but are paid minimum wage for eight of those hours, she said.

Another demonstrator, Lillibeth Navarro, who is disabled, said, “The state is making it difficult for me to live at home. They’re giving me no choice but to live in the streets because I don’t want to live in a nursing home.”

A spokesman for Wilson said the governor is reviewing the budget and its accompanying bills, but that it was premature to say whether he would approve or reject the in-home care bill.