Family Agency May Take Over Suicide Center

The financially struggling Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center may get a new lease on life if plans for Family Service of Los Angeles to acquire its assets go through, according to officials at the two agencies.

The boards of directors are negotiating to make the suicide center a division of Family Service, a move that could take place as early as July, Tony Lufrano, president of Family Service, said this week.

The 27-year-old center, which was the first of its kind in the country, has been beset in recent months by internal bickering and financial problems. In January, half of the center’s crisis-line counselors, many of them volunteers, walked off their jobs and demanded changes in management after the board announced that it was firing a popular supervisor as part of a budget cutback plan. Co-founders Dr. Robert E. Litman and Dr. Norman L. Farberow attempted an unsuccessful hostile takeover of the agency in November, accusing the board of directors of squandering the agency’s resources.

The center’s board of directors approached Family Service about the acquisition. “We decided it was a good opportunity to maximize our resources,” said Lufrano, noting that the center’s counseling programs complement his agency’s mental health services.

The 58-year-old Family Service of Los Angeles serves 15,000 clients yearly and has a $2-million budget, of which about half comes from Los Angeles United Way. The agency, which has a full-time staff of 50, provides a variety of services at 11 centers throughout the county, including family counseling, group therapy, day care, emergency food and literacy classes.

The suicide center provides several health intervention programs, including AIDS education services, drug treatment and the crisis hot line, which serves about 18,000 people a year. The center has a budget of about $1.5 million, but in its more successful years received as much as $10 million annually. It has operated at a deficit for the last three years.

Recent financial cutbacks have included laying off a third of the center’s 90 workers. The center’s board did not renew the agency’s $1.5-million methadone maintenance and counseling contracts with Los Angeles County because the programs were losing money, center Director Sheila Halfon said. The agency is now getting a certified audit for Family Service as part of the negotiations.

About half of the $126,000 budget for the center’s crisis line comes from county contracts, and preliminary talks indicate the contract will be transferable to Family Service, Lufrano said.

Under the acquisition, the suicide center’s board of directors would be dissolved, Lufrano said. Halfon would be made a Family Service vice president in charge of the suicide prevention unit. Founders Litman and Farberow, who now work in the center’s suicide research department, would be asked to carry on in that capacity. The center will remain housed at 1041 S. Menlo Ave.