Senior Legal Hotline's vision for integrated service delivery

Why Legal Services for Seniors?

There are more than 5 million California residents over 60, far more than any other state. Estimates of population trends indicate that the numbers of seniors in California will continue to increase dramatically this decade, as they did in the previous one.

Close to 10 percent of California's seniors have incomes below the poverty line -- and our experience tells us that many times that number are only slightly above it, far from being able to afford private attorneys for their legal needs. Nearly 30 percent of the seniors are members of minority groups, for whom cultural barriers, especially language -- can add to isolation.

This is the picture at a time when seniors are facing enormous new challenges due to changes in Medicare and Medi-Cal, elimination of SSI for many legal immigrants, momentous demographic changes and a restructuring of the economy.

As the baby boom generation ages, there will be a further dramatic increase in the senior population, both numerically and as a proportion of the total.

Health care costs are again outstripping general cost-of-living increases. Seniors are disproportionately affected, because they typically need more health care services and tend to have stagnant or even falling incomes.

We anticipate a growing need for advice regarding planning for long-term care to meet rising costs as Medi-Cal rules change. There is already a huge growth in new insurance and financial products -- many of dubious value -- being pitched to worried seniors. Those who live alone and/or in more isolated, rural settings are less likely to have access to traditional sources of sound legal and financial advice and are therefore even more vulnerable to hard sales pitches and scare tactics.

Foreclosures, other debtor defaults and bankruptcies all rose sharply in the 1990s - and continue to plague seniors who can't take advantage of the improved employment picture and don't have extra cash to invest in the raging stock market. The one asset many seniors do have is significant equity in older homes they have owned for a long time, making them prime targets for predatory lenders and home repair scams. At the same time, older Californians with low income are less eligible for legitimate loans and more likely to default when they do borrow money, often at extremely high rates with obscene fees. This, in turn, makes such seniors less able to meet other financial obligations for necessities like food, shelter, utilities and health care.

As traditional family ties continue to weaken, more seniors are left alone, vulnerable to financial and physical abuse -- at times by the same family members who once, as a matter of course, would have protected them. Coordination and sharing of information typically fall short among law enforcement, health-care providers, attorneys and others who may encounter abused elders and who can do something about it if they work together. Outreach with a particular focus on seniors who are isolated due to physical, economic or cultural barriers is needed.

We are already witnessing an increase in seniors being asked to become caregivers for their grandchildren as work requirements and time limits for welfare reform take effect and already troubled parents lose benefits. California's confusing and complicated legal system, in which three different courts deal with issues of child custody and visitation, make it difficult for grandparent caregivers to stabilize their new family situations, compromising their ability to obtain the support they need, including assured access to physical and mental health care for themselves and their grandchildren.

Without a reliable, convenient source of legal advice and auxiliary assistance that homebound and isolated seniors can easily access, more seniors will be ripped off and more will lose their homes unnecessarily, many will receive less timely health care access, there will be less response to elder abuse, more children will lack stable homes with grandparents, there will be more faulty planning for long-term care.

Local Programs and a Statewide Hotline: Complementary Roles for Maximum Benefit

AB 830, like its unsuccessful predecessor in 2000, SB 1793, would only be a start toward harnessing state resources to improve legal services for seniors in California. It would allocate a small budget for the convening of a task force, comprising representatives of various interested parties, under the leadership of the state Department of Aging. This body would then issue recommendations on how to provide more services and how to optimize their methods of delivery.

Our experiences in California and those of some 20 statewide hotlines around the country have reinforced our opinion that this component of legal services delivery is effective, efficient and extremely useful to large numbers of seniors in need of advice, information, brief services and referrals -- on any legal subject. Especially for those elderly who are isolated and disadvantaged by geography, by disability, by poverty, by discrimination, by language barriers or by lack of a family or social network, the opportunity to have a "home visit" by phone bestows many of the advantages of traditional legal services at a fraction of the cost to people who otherwise would be unlikely to obtain any representation at all. When the phone session is followed up by the provision of written information, a quality referral and/or additional assistance when appropriate and possible, many of the legal problems faced by the elderly population can actually be solved.

At its inception, the Northern California hotline was modeled on earlier Administration on Aging (AOA)- and AARP-assisted projects in Pennsylvania, Washington D.C. and elsewhere. Since February 1994, when it first expanded beyond the borders of Sacramento County under an AOA pilot grant, LSNC's hotline has fielded a steadily increasing number of calls from seniors and requests for other services from dozens of organizations. Case numbers grew from 1,103 in 1993 (when the hotline operated only in Sacramento), to 2,239, 4,323 and 5,189 respectively during the first federal grant. The numbers fell during the hiatus that followed, but in 1999, the hotline was one of five recipients of new three-year grants (out of 24 applicants -- and one of only two to be renewed), and the number of cases in 2000 rose to 5,476 and continues to increase as we expand capacity and outreach, building on our accumulated experience and resources.

A statewide Senior Legal Hotline could do much more, however. For one thing, its benefits have not yet been extended to Southern California - the AOA pilot grants are not proportional to senior population, so it has been impossible to take on the whole state. Moreover, even in Northern California, and even with extensive use of volunteer advocates on the phones, capacity lags considerably behind demand for services. Expanded outreach plans are being implemented slowly so as not to exceed the hotline's ability to serve greater numbers of clients, pending recruitment of more volunteers and/or funding for more staff.

In addition, much more could be done in the area of preventive legal education: publication of quality written material, sent by mail to clients to arm them against the most common problems before they arise and distributed statewide at key locations where seniors gather; availability of this and other material on line as more and more seniors gain computer access; and workshops for live audiences conducted by knowledgeable legal personnel whose credibility and integrity are beyond question because unlike the presenters at many "free seminars" for estate planning, hotline personnel are not soliciting for business or selling other products. We are undertaking this educational work as much as possible - and much more would be possible with adequate resources.

Clearly, however, a statewide hotline cannot do the entire job. Good local providers of senior legal services are essential to take on the cases of low-income seniors who require ongoing representation; to address specific local issues that affect multiple clients; to operate live clinics; and to hold more extensive live educational programs.

Currently, a few local programs that have secured substantial local and/or foundation support on top of their Older Americans Act funding do an excellent job providing these services. Most, however, are woefully underfunded; they must limit their assistance to a few priority subjects and are able to offer little more than advice and brief services similar to what a phone hotline can do. In some counties, there is no local contract at all for senior legal services or merely a skeletal referral program.

We hope that AB 830 will lead to further legislative action to ensure that good local programs will exist in all areas, and that they will be encouraged to focus particularly on direct service to needy seniors, educational programs and involvement in local issues.

Statewide, meanwhile, hotline advocates could relieve the local programs of the need to provide legal advice, brief services and general education that can assist large numbers of seniors most efficiently by phone, mail and computer - as has already been demonstrated by the existing Northern California project.

Finally, a mechanism should be created to ensure better communication among all the local programs and the hotline, for more seamless and effective provision of direct services, for joint educational efforts of both advocates and clients and for identification of major issues affecting seniors that can then be addressed collaboratively.