Watchdog Panel Urges Care-Home Crackdown : Charges Deukmejian Administration Hasn’t Corrected ‘Deplorable Conditions’

SACRAMENTO —  Charging that the Deukmejian Administration is too slow in reforming “deplorable conditions” at privately run board-and-care homes, the state’s Little Hoover Commission on Thursday called for legislation that would triple fines and allow local police departments to enforce state regulations.

In a letter to Gov. George Deukmejian, commission chairman Nathan Shapell complained that the state Department of Social Services often fails to respond to complaints at homes for the elderly, mentally ill and retarded and that some “friendly” state inspectors continue to tip off operators before inspections.

Shapell said the commission “was very pleased” that the governor and the Legislature acted last year to bolster the department’s staff. But he insisted at a Capitol press conference that the efforts did not go far enough and that many problems uncovered by the commission in early 1984 remain uncorrected.

“The Department of Social Services does not act as diligently as they should,” Shapell said. “In some cases when they went in (to the homes) there was no food whatsoever.” Instead of doing something immediately, he added, the department gave the operators 30 days to correct the situation.

“There are still horror stories beyond any description,” Shapell said.

Deukemjian’s office referred all calls to the Department of Social Services, where a spokesman said there would be no comment until officials hear from the governor’s office.

Thursday’s announcement was made a year after the commission, which was created to promote efficiency in state government, concluded a long investigation into the state’s board-and-care homes. In its final report, it charged that conditions in some cases are so terrible that it would be “unthinkable and immoral for government to allow such facilities to operate.”

The report estimated that substandard conditions exist in about 10% to 30% of the state’s 22,000 board-and-care homes.

Commission members made unannounced visits to several facilities and reported finding evidence that residents are severely abused, beaten, fed spoiled food and often left unattended.

The report prompted the Legislature to pass a series of seven bills that set up a 24-hour emergency telephone hot line to report abuses, bolstered funding for a network of volunteer monitors and provided more information to the public.

At a follow-up hearing earlier this month, a social services official presented a generally upbeat account of improvements that have taken place. But other witnesses testified that conditions remain much the same.

The package of 12 bills announced on Thursday will attempt to implement the remaining recommendations in the Little Hoover Commission’s 1984 report. In addition to tripling fines for unlicensed homes and allowing local police to cite violators, the bills would speed license revocations, provide for notification of residents’ families when a facility has been cited and require inspections within 90 days of a home being granted a license.

The measures do not include a controversial recommendation made earlier by the commission to take the licensing function away from the Department of Social Services and turn it over to the state attorney general.

Richard C. Mahan, the commission’s executive director, said a “number of questions were raised” about the advisability of such a switch. It is “still worth looking at,” he added, but probably will not be acted on immediately.

In its letter to Deukmejian, the commission said it had documented one recent case in which a facility was allowed to operate above its licensed capacity for three years despite being cited for keeping its fire exits blocked and providing insufficient food to residents.

Additionally, the commission said, it continues to receive testimony about “friendly inspectors always visiting the same facilities and, in some cases, providing a tip-off that they were coming.” State officials have denied the charges, but commission officials said they were informed that one inspector was fired recently for doing just that.

“The evaluators and inspectors are rarely rotated on their assignments in facilities,” Mahan said. “Therefore it becomes a familiar relationship between the inspector and the facility, and a degree of objectivity may be lost.”

That is less likely to happen, officials said, if local police are allowed to issue citations.