Budget Cuts Hit Neediest the Hardest : Welfare: State social service reductions would slice payments and home care for the disabled and cut aid to the elderly and families with dependent children.

Since snapping his spine in a freak diving accident in 1967, Robert Granigan has refused to dwell in the past.

Two and a half decades as a quadriplegic have not dampened the Chula Vista man’s spirits, but state budget cuts this week have.

State-paid social workers care for Granigan, 41, helping him bathe, use the bathroom, dress, shop, cook and eat. At 283 hours a month, Granigan gets the maximum amount of assistance allowed by law.

On Wednesday, Sacramento lawmakers and Gov. Pete Wilson sliced about 30 hours per month off the total, an action Granigan describes as “diabolical.”

Before this week, Granigan had been consumed with worry over whether three state-paid housekeeping attendants would continue to work for him. Since July, they have been given state IOUs instead of paychecks.

To Granigan, who only has partial use of his right arm, each hour cut is one less that he can live fully.

“When things like this happen, seems like the people who are the most powerless are affected the most,” he said. “I feel like I’m in a prison that’s burning down and I want out. If I had a choice about my health, I would not be on welfare.”

The bulk of Granigan’s monthly $602 Social Security check goes to pay rent. At $495 a month, the remaining $107 has to last for telephone, gas, electricity, food and transportation costs. Anything left is for survival, Granigan said.

Granigan’s plight underscores the seriousness of $22 million in social service cuts to San Diego County, including a reduction of $5.7 million alone to In-Home Supportive Services, the program serving Granigan.

Some 14,000 people are in the program and social service workers have begun to notify everyone that their hours will be trimmed. On average, each recipient gets 85 hours of care per month, which includes bathing, shopping, meal preparation and other services.

The program provides state money for those who care for the ailing. A reduction in care may mean that some in the program will be forced into nursing homes.

Administrators are cutting hours for everyone in the program by 12%. For some, the cutbacks will be minimal. For others, like Granigan, a 12% cut is significant.

On many other fronts, social service reductions are hitting San Diego County hard.

About 60,000 disabled, blind and elderly residents will have their state supplemental income--money that is given as a supplement to Social Security--slashed. For the seniors and disabled, the cut is to $608 per month from $645 as of Nov. 1. Payments for the blind will be lowered $42--from $719 per month to $677.

Welfare payments affecting 61,000 families in the county are being cut by $14.7 million. As of Oct. 1, a welfare mother with two children will see benefits reduced from $663 a month to $633 a month. A mother of three would get $753 a month starting Oct. 1, down from $788 a month.

Those payments could be further reduced by Nov. 1 if the state gets a federal waiver that would cut welfare another 1.3% statewide.

Under that formula, the benefits for a mother in San Diego County with two children would drop even further to $627 a month and for a mother of three, the monthly benefits would amount to $745 a month.

The federal waiver would be based on a reduction formula that places San Diego County into the same tier as Los Angeles, Alameda, Contra Costa and Santa Barbara counties, considered the second most costly places to live.

The state is also reducing San Diego’s County’s administrative costs for running the welfare program by $1.6 million.

Already, the county has tried to trim thousands from its last-resort welfare program for 6,000 able-bodied adults who receive General Relief benefits. On Tuesday, a San Diego Superior Court judge ruled that the county could balance its budget by cutting those from the program it deems employable.

The county is already $5 million short of the $22 million it needs to provide the benefits to everyone on its General Relief rolls. Those who get the benefits are given $291 each month.

Pamela Fonseca, 20, of Normal Heights, heard news of the pending cuts as she picked up her monthly Aid to Families with Dependent Children check Thursday.

Her brow crinkled as her son and daughter, ages 4 and 2, darted through a row of parked cars in front of the the county welfare office in Kearny Mesa.

“They can’t cut it any more,” she said, fingering the $663 check with the computer type and county logo. “That’s all we get.”

Her eyes focused in the distance. The numbers ticked off in her head.

Five hundred dollars goes to rent; gas and electric is about $25, and $50 goes to pay tuition for her son’s preschool, leaving less than $100 for food, Fonseca said. Starting next month, a family of three will receive $633.

“That’s all we get?” Fonseca said.

After a long pause, she spoke about plans to complete her GED, go to beauty college and leave government assistance programs behind.

“You can’t live off welfare forever,” she said.

Lana Willingham, assistant director of the county Social Services Department, said cutbacks in her agency will hurt but that legislators were only following the will of those who didn’t want taxes raised.

“I try to look at it from both sides,” she said. “Taxpayers don’t want to pay more money, yet the mom with two children or the disabled will be significantly impacted. My hope would be that we could work with families to find them full-time or part-time employment, but in this economy who knows? That’s what has gotten us to this dilemma in the first place.”

The county also is suffering $5.3 million in mental health cuts, a $2-million drop in indigent health care, and $500,000 cuts in alcohol and drug programs.

Cuts other than health and welfare services total $24.4 million. County officials have yet to decide how libraries, public safety, animal control, parks and recreation and other areas will suffer.

The numbers are lost on Robert Granigan, but the results are clear: it is now much more difficult for him to go through job training and seek employment.

He aspired to become a computer programmer through a special training and placement program run by Grossmont College. Granigan has limited control of his lower right arm, by which he controls an electric wheel chair. He is able to manipulate rubber-band wrapped dowels to punch a phone pad or keyboard.

“I have the mind and the drive to do things with my life,” Granigan said. “I have made things happen. I just don’t want to lose the chance.”

If he cannot retain in-home attendants, his options are few. Most frightening is the specter of having to return to a nursing home, Granigan said. He spent 10 months in a nursing home after the diving accident in shallow water off Sunset Cliffs on Sept. 4, 1967--25 years ago today.

“There are worse things than death,” he said. “Returning to a nursing home may be one of them. . . . I’m at a place in my life where I could go either way--get training, then a job and become self-sufficient or let them put me in a home and take away everything I enjoy about life.

“Well, it won’t happen if I can help it. I’m going to fight.”