Home run.

Home care workers have finally caught a break with the announcement earlier this month that the federal government would funnel $1.7 billion into a program that the state had been ready to close.

The money, spread over five years, will help fund the Residual Program that allows spouses and parents to be paid for taking care of their ill and disabled spouses and children. Also receiving special services are Alzheimer's patients and those needing simple assistance, such as meal preparation.

Some 25,000 Los Angeles County residents receive care through the program annually, but supervisors were faced with a quandary earlier this year when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger threatened to cut off all funding because of the state budget crunch.

However, protestors argued that the move would force the state and federal government to pay more if the recipients were forced into nursing care. That argument ended up carrying the day in Sacramento, as well as in Washington, when the Bush administration decided to help fund the program for the first time. That funding is expected to cut the county's $60 million annual cost for the program almost in half.

Tyrone Freeman, general president of Local 434B of the Service Employees International Union, said he will ask supervisors to raise the wages of county home care workers by 50 cents to $8 an hour. In other counties they are paid more than $10 an hour.

Staff reporter Laurence Darmiento can be reached at [phone], ext. 237, or at [e-mail].