Family Planning Clinics Adjust to Funding Cuts : Some Reduce Services as Legislative Compromise Fails to Restore State Money

South Bay family planning clinics are adapting to sharp cuts in state funding after an attempted legislative compromise failed to restore their state money.

The clinics, which typically serve poor women who receive little medical care elsewhere, are continuing to function with curtailed budgets and, in some cases, reduced services.

The Manhattan Beach-based South Bay Free Clinic, which serves about 20,000 family planning clients, plans no cut in services but could be forced into that by the end of the 1989-90 fiscal year. The Women’s Health Care Clinic at Los Angeles County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, which sees 6,000 patients a year, has received new grants and hopes to maintain services. The Harbor Free Clinic in San Pedro is reducing hours and expects to see fewer family planning clients, who have numbered 2,000 a year.

Hours in three local family planning clinics of the Los Angeles County Health Services Department may be cut back beginning Oct. 1, but a final decision has not been made, according to Marsha Epstein, district health officer. One clinic is in Lawndale and two, Imperial Heights and Curtis Tucker health centers, are in Inglewood.

Gov. George Deukmejian in July dealt family planning programs statewide a blow when he cut $24 million from the $36-million budget of the state Office of Family Planning. The governor said he questioned whether family planning dollars are effectively spent, but others attributed the cut to a linking of family planning with the controversy over abortion.

For their part, family planning advocates say they are prevented by law from recommending abortion, and they argue that birth control, the primary family planning goal, actually reduces the need for abortions.

An attempt was made in the Legislature to recover the money through a budget compromise with the governor, but a bill died in the closing hours of the legislative session earlier this month. Craig A. Vincent-Jones, development officer of the South Bay Free Clinic, said the agency lost $250,000 in family planning money through the state budget cut. He said the clinic will attempt to make up this loss through accelerated community fund raising, something he conceded is “an extreme challenge.”

Earlier, the clinic closed its Teen Advocates program, which was funded with family planning money and which trained teen-agers to help other teen-agers deal with pregnancy and drug abuse problems. Vincent-Jones said that, to save money, the clinic is cutting internal expenses, not filling vacant jobs and freezing salaries. It also received a $60,000 emergency grant from the South Bay Hospital District.

Harbor-UCLA Clinic

Dr. Anita Nelson, medical director of the Women’s Health Care Clinic at Los Angeles County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, termed that clinic “alive, but not healthy.”

She said the clinic lost $368,000 in family planning money, which resulted in staff cuts, including a nurse practitioner and community health worker who saw family planning patients.

But she said the clinic also gained $250,000 in private grants for several studies relating to birth control and sexually transmitted diseases. Nelson said she hopes that staff members hired for the grant studies will be able to see family practice patients.

Nelson said she doesn’t know whether fewer clients will be seen in the long run.

The Harbor Free Clinic, which operates two afternoon and two evening medical clinics a week, will eliminate afternoon clinics on Oct. 1, Director Donna Brown said.

Fewer Hours of Service

“The cut in hours will mean we will see fewer people,” Brown said. She said about 40 patients are seen in each clinic session, up to one-half of them family planning clients.

Brown said that, as a result of state budget cuts, the clinic lost a $34,000 federal grant for teen-age pregnancy prevention education that had been contingent on receiving their full state allocation. The agency also lost $18,000 for a similar program, which worked with teen-agers and their parents, and $46,000 for basic contraceptive services.

As is the South Bay Free Clinic, the Harbor clinic is accelerating community fund raising. But Brown said: “It won’t make up $4,000 a month. That’s not realistic.”