BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- An adult day care program has been saved.

ElderLife was in jeopardy, thanks to proposed state budget cuts, but Kern County supervisors refused to let it fall to the budget axe.

"This plan is premature," Supervisor Mike Maggard said Tuesday morning.

Kern Medical Center CEO Paul Hensler had proposed shutting down the program because the governor proposes the elimination of Medi-Cal benefits for adults, including reimbursement for adult day health care.

"This makes the difference between life and death" for some seniors' families, Maggard said.

Families, seniors and supporters had packed the Tuesday morning session of the Board of Supervisors at word ElderLife could close on March 15.

The program is housed in the Sagebrush center on Columbus Street, and it opened in 1995. ElderLife has day programs for people 55 and older, and some other adults with certain disabilities. The program provides social activities and services for physical and mental health.

"With that care, the activities, the skills and everything, my mother has improved 85 percent," one woman told the board.

KMC chief Hensler said the proposal to close ElderLife was purely financial. He said if the state discontinued Medi-Cal funding for adult day care, the county would face a financial loss.

"The risk of continuing the program beyond March 15 is basically close to $100,000 a month that the county would end up paying for the program," Hensler said.

But, families said the savings would be false.

"My family may be faced with the possibility of putting her in a nursing home, and certainly we don't want that," one woman said with her frail mother at her side.

"If they closed it down, our family, we both have to work 40 hours a week, me and my wife, one of us would have to stop to take care of mom," Ray Osborn said. "And probably our family would be entering the welfare system."

East High school teacher Bob Lewy told the board his campus has room to house the program, if that would help save it. East High is also the site for a health careers academy, which has about 200 students. Lewy said those kids already spend about six hours a week at ElderLife volunteering.

Several students also pleaded with the board to continue the program, somehow.

Program directors say 68 people use ElderLife.

"KMC has determined that ElderLife is not essential to its core mission and can be eliminated without any or significant impact to the mandated services for indigent patients that the hospital provides," reads Hensler's letter to the board.

But, supervisor Maggard disagreed, and the other members of the board also said cutting the program now would be "premature" because no final state budget has been passed.

Supervisor Michael Rubio said ElderLife should be saved. He wants a solution to be found.

"Find a way to accomplish this ourselves, so that we can take care of our own future," Rubio said. "We owe it to these people who literally built this country."

Rubio asked KMC, the county administrative office, and county office of aging to look for ways to reduce expenses for the program, and find other, private sources of funds. The board voted unanimously for Rubio's proposal.

"Thank God, I think the decision is the right one," Randy Osborn said. "You heard the message today, that there's so many people, their lives would be affected in such a negative manner."