The National Senior Citizens Law Center asks for your help in distributing the attached notice to your networks, members and IHSS consumers, and in posting the attached flyer in your offices.  The notice and flyer are about the settlement of the Oster and Dominguez lawsuits to stop deep cuts in In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS), California's personal care services program.  For those of you who work with limited English proficient consumers, the notice and flyer are available in 12 additional languages on the Disability Rights California website, www.disabilityrightsca.org (click on the IHSS Settlement button).  Please circulate this notice, and alert people to the availability of the notices in other languages.
 
As you know, the National Senior Citizens Law Center, together with lead counsel Disability Rights California and other co-counsel, have been representing IHSS consumer for over three years in Oster v. Lightbourne, a case challenging California's budget cuts to IHSS.  IHSS recipients and their caregivers had won temporary court orders over the past 3 years that stopped the State from implementing the cuts to IHSS. The judge stated that the cuts would cause "incredible human suffering," and that "people could lose something irreplaceable - the ability to remain safely in their homes." These cuts would have meant a significant reduction in hours, or complete disqualification from IHSS, for hundreds of thousands of IHSS recipients.
 
The State had appealed the earlier court orders stopping the cuts.  No one knew how the higher court would rule, and whether the courts would allow the deep cuts in IHSS to go into effect. To avoid this risk, we have reached a settlement with the state that provides for repealing the challenged cuts of 20% to 50% or more, and replacing them with a smaller cut. Specifically, starting July 1, 2013, there will be a new reduction 4.4%, in addition to the current 3.6% hours cut.  This will be a total reduction of 8%.  The reduction will drop to 7% on July 1, 2014. Finally, the settlement provides a pathway to stabilize the IHSS program with new funding and the possibility of restoring all cuts in IHSS hours (including the 3.6% cut that went into effect in 2009) over the next two years. The settlement is a compromise to achieve long-term stability of the IHSS program and remove uncertainty about future cuts for IHSS consumers.  It also resolves the Dominguez case, which was filed in 2009 to stop wage cuts to IHSS providers.
 
The federal court preliminarily approved the class settlement on April 4, 2013. The notice to the class members in Oster and Dominguez is attached.  It explains how to get more information and how to object. (The deadline for objections is May 3, 2013). A one-page poster/flyer is also attached. Please see Disability Rights California's website, www.disabilityrightsca.org, for background materials about the case, including the settlement agreement itself.  The notice and flyer will be posted in additional languages soon.

If you have any questions about the IHSS settlement, please contact Anna Rich, arich@nsclc.org, or (510) 663-1055, ext. 305. 


READ THE IHSS SETTLEMENT CLASS NOTICE

READ THE ONE-PAGE FLYER

For more information about this case...