Attendees at Acacia Adult Day Services center in Garden Grove play a game after breakfast. The center provides low-income elderly and disabled people meals, medical care, occupational therapy and social programs. Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed eliminating funding for Adult Day Services programs to help cover a $54 billion gap for the 2020-21 fiscal year. (Lauren M. Whaley/Center for Health Reporting)
A recent article from the OC Register highlights the critical need for advocacy to save Orange County’s senior services. State budget cuts could end adult day care that helps thousands of local families. What can you do to help? Read the message from Justice in Aging below:
Now is the time for advocates to take action to ensure that California’s low-income older adults, especially older adults of color, are not left without the health, economic security, and home and community-based services they rely on during the COVID-19 public health emergency.
California must pass its budget by June 15 and decisions are being made now. We need everyone to push back against the Governor’s proposed cuts put forth in the May Revise and ask the legislature and the Governor to agree on a budget that preserves programs for those who are hardest hit by both the pandemic and the resulting economic crisis.
Call, write to, and tweet at your state legislators and Governor Newsom and tell them not to balance the budget on the backs of poor older Californians. Be sure to call out how the budget should advance equity for older adults of color who are most hard hit by the crisis, rather than deepening the inequities, as the proposed cuts do.
Older Californians built this state and are most at risk right now. They need more help. Not less. We all need to fight back.
Support Older Californians:
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Use the hashtags #CABudget and #CareNotCuts in your tweets.
