Funding Cuts May End Programs to Aid Mentally Ill

The turnout was small Friday morning in the sunny room, decorated with bright paper stars and homemade murals, at Hillview Mental Health Center in Lake View Terrace.

Usually more than two dozen severely mentally ill people gather there each morning to drink coffee with friends, play games or sing. Only 12 showed up Friday.

For much of the week, many of the rest have stayed in their rooms at board-and-care homes in the area--not willing to venture out.

“They are really scared, worried about their future,” said Bernadette Haderlein, the clinic’s music therapist.

The Hillview clinic on Eldridge Avenue, one of the oldest mental health centers in California, is among 11 clinics sprinkled through Los Angeles County that could be closed if the county cannot obtain more money from the state.

Two of the three county-run mental health clinics in the San Fernando Valley--one in Canoga Park and another in North Hollywood--also are on the hit list. In addition, a psychiatric program at Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar is scheduled to be curtailed.

The County Board of Supervisors authorized the closures Thursday to make up for a projected shortfall of almost $16 million in its 1988-89 mental health budget. The county will be able to keep some clinics open if it receives enough extra money from the state before the budget is finalized this fall.

County officials say they are optimistic about receiving some additional state money but are not predicting what amount.

Without extra state funds, the clinics will shut down in late August, said Roberto Quiroz, director of the county’s Mental Health Department.

‘Spell Out Disaster’

Fernando L. Escarcega, the county’s district chief in charge of the Valley’s outpatient programs, said gutting the Valley’s mental health programs would be devastating.

“All I can spell out is disaster,” he said. “That’s the only way I can convey it in one word. It will be tremendously difficult for a lot of sick people.”

The endangered Valley programs serve almost 6,000 people, most of whom are chronically mentally ill. The clinics provide counseling, psychiatric evaluations and drug prescriptions, and intercede for clients to allow them to live independently. With the clinics’ help, many can reside in board-and-care homes rather than mental hospitals.

Escarcega said it would be impossible for the Valley’s lone remaining county clinic--in the city of San Fernando--to fill the void.

Without the clinics’ support, the chronically mentally ill could quickly regress, mental health experts predict. Some patients would end up in the streets or in jail, while others would be admitted to state hospitals, experts say.

“We’re talking about some very sick people,” Escarcega said. “The sickest, the poorest, the dirtiest. Nobody wants to deal with these people.”

Some of Hillview’s clients--a mix of ages, races and backgrounds--gathered around a table Friday to quietly convey their fears.

“The more you worry about it, the more you get depressed,” said John Durant, a 37-year-old who has been a Hillview regular for two years. “We get scared.”

“I’m mentally ill,” said Shonnon Huff, a 56-year-old resident of a Pacoima board-and-care home who has relied upon Hillview since 1968. “I need my medicine filled. If I didn’t have that--it’s for my nerves--I don’t know how sick I could get. We’d all have to look elsewhere.”

The proposed cuts caught the Hillview staff by surprise. Carl McCraven, executive director, and his wife, Eva, assistant executive director, were vacationing in Connecticut recently when they received a frantic call from the clinic. A staff member read them a newspaper story that mentioned Hillview was slated for a $898,219 cutback. The couple flew home immediately to begin a lobbying campaign.

Bankruptcy Possible

While the cut would eliminate Hillview’s outpatient programs, which serve 1,420 people, the facility would still receive money to maintain a residential program in several houses in the northeast Valley. But the McCravens told health officials that overhead costs would force them to close that program too and possibly file for bankruptcy.

“It’s the dumbest economic decision I’ve ever heard of,” Eva McCraven said of the projected cutback. She noted that it is much more expensive to institutionalize the mentally ill.

“It will cost them far more to put us out of business,” she said.

On Tuesday, about 100 Hillview clients, staffers, board-and-care operators and Lake View Terrace homeowner activists filled two buses and a van, and took their case to the Board of Supervisors. The homeowners say that Hillview always has been a good neighbor and that they fear its closing would increase the number of homeless at Hansen Dam.

The board-and-care operators fear that they too would close if Hillview does not exist to provide services the state mandates that their residents receive.

The Hillview group pleaded with the board to provide the money to keep the facility open and was partially successful.

Just minutes before the supervisors approved the county’s budget Thursday afternoon, Supervisor Mike Antonovich found $101,000 from his county discretionary fund to keep Hillview going for an extra month. At Antonovich’s urging, Quiroz agreed to move Hillview up on the priority list of clinics whose funds should be restored if more state money comes in.