The Legislature finds that:

(a) Elderly persons, like any other persons, prefer to remain in their own homes rather than in dependent living situations, including long-term care facilities.

(b) Many elderly persons, with a minimal to moderate amount of supportive services, mainly nonmedical in character, could maintain themselves at home; others, with slightly more support and perhaps day care supervision, could remain in independent living situations or homes of relatives or friends. Yet it is just this nonmedical, nontechnical level of supportive services that is largely unavailable to the vast majority of old persons.

(c) Most elderly persons living on fixed incomes cannot afford private help or the cost of home health or homemaker agencies; elderly low-income public assistance recipients can receive such care only in limited circumstances under welfare cash grant attendant care or homemaker programs.

(d) Supportive personal and social care in many cases enables the elderly to maintain a state of health that decreases or postpones the need for health care.

(e) Reducing or postponing the need for health care is not only beneficial to the elderly individual’s general welfare but also results in economic savings both to the individual, his or her family, and the people of California in cases where the elderly person is also a recipient of public assistance or potentially in need of public funds through cash grants, Medi-Cal, or use of state or county facilities.

(f) Titles XVIII and XIX of the Social Security Act are largely concerned with crisis or short-term care; there are no adequate programs, public or private, which financially assist the elderly person to maintain his independence, health and mobility at home.

(Added by Stats. 1974, Ch. 992.)