One in an occasional series examining government spending as California copes with recession.

Leona Heydenryk, 92, is already imagining how she will manage, hauling one grocery bag out of her car, pushing it to her home on her rolling walker and then inhaling from her oxygen tank before going back for the second bag.

If the budget cuts that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed go through, the Grass Valley senior will have to make other contingency plans. Social workers say she will score too well on a "functional index" to merit the part-time services of Consuelo Lopez, who helps her shop, clean house, do laundry and prepare meals to keep on hand.

"I'm anxious to get up the days she comes because I know she's coming. She's my mainstay, I guess," Heydenryk said. Her daughter died of cancer years ago, and her son, 69, is also frail and on a limited income and dialysis in Santa Rosa.

California's In-Home Supportive Services program, which pays caregivers of seniors such as Heydenryk or disabled people, is the state's fastest growing social service program. Its costs reached nearly $1.7 billion this year – a distinction that put it squarely in the middle of the battle over California's budget crisis.

Under pressure to protect the program's integrity and prevent waste, state welfare officials say they're hoping to hire more investigators and adopting new technology to cross-check records to crack down on theft.

In Los Angeles County, where $400 million of state IHSS money is spent, welfare officials have given $10 million from their budget to the county's district attorney to go after fraud. At least 24 people, including a social worker, have been charged since July with bilking more than $2 million in faked services.

Enrollment has doubled

Fraud merits attention, policymakers say, but it's the sheer magnitude of the program and its projected future need that inspire the greatest concern.

In a decade, enrollment in IHSS has doubled to 444,000 people, at last count. The state's spending on it – federal and county governments also pay portions – has increased 110 percent since 2001.

During this time, the average annual jump in IHSS expenditures has been more than 11 percent, more than twice the rate of increases in spending on children's programs.

The reason: California, like the entire nation, is seeing a boom in senior citizens, some of whom are frail, developing dementia or other problems, and do not have enough in assets to pay for help they need.

More disabled people, too, now live at home and are cared for by family members.

The state's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office pegs more than half of the cost increase since 2001 on more enrollment, with the rest due to wage increases negotiated under union contracts with counties.

The state currently pays into a maximum of $12.10 an hour for caregiver wages and health benefits. Twelve rural counties pay their workers only $8 an hour, the state minimum wage. Santa Clara County has the highest hourly compensation at $14.68. The state average is $10 an hour.

"We pay, in most counties, barely a living wage," said Trula LaCalle, executive director of the California Association of IHSS Public Authorities, who supervise the programs in counties.

Rules limit paid hours

In spite of rising costs, the IHSS program is really a bargain, LaCalle said. The LAO reported in 2006 that the average annual cost for in-home care is $10,000 a person, compared to $55,000 for institutional care.

It's also a bargain, LaCalle said, because half the state's caregivers are relatives who sometimes work round the clock, offering difficult, intimate care beyond the hours they are paid.

Under the rules, no caregiver can be paid for more than 283 work hours a month, which averages to about nine hours a day, seven days a week.

Faced with a $40 billion-plus budget shortfall, the governor wants to cut caregiver wages, IHSS services and state subsidies. He estimates $63.4 million in savings for the current fiscal year and $384 million in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Call The Bee's Susan Ferriss, (916) 321-1267.