DANA POINT : Conference Focuses on Area Social Needs

For the first time, top decision-makers from several public and private human service organizations in South Orange County met to share information Tuesday on the rapidly developing social needs there.

The first Human Service Conference, held at the Dana Point Resort hotel, gave such public officials as Supervisors Thomas F. Riley and Gaddi H. Vasquez a chance to meet representatives of more than 140 social service groups, in workshops dealing with issues from drug abuse to mental health.

“All these groups speak as individual voices,” said Judy Curreri, Dana Point city councilwoman. “We had to speak as a unified voice. This conference is a start.”

The event was sponsored by the South Orange County Community Services Council, a coalition of social service groups.

“By bringing together people who are the real decision makers in the community, we can make a real dent” in the social problems facing South County, said Lee Steelman, council president.

Although a dozen seminars on different issues were offered, a common complaint was that help for people in crisis is frequently scarce.

Diane Gipson, a county social worker who deals with child abuse, said: “There are more and more people looking for help. And there is a real lack of services available in South Orange County.”

Steelman recalled one man who called a Community Services information line and threatened to commit suicide.

She took the man’s number and promised to find help. Several phone calls later, she was still looking. “One mental health unit actually told me that if I gave them his name, they’d have to call the police,” she said. Steelman finally found a private psychiatrist willing to see the distraught man.

The well-known affluence of South County, “casts a false shadow on the needs of people here,” Steelman said. “That false impression has a harmful effect on people who don’t have money.”

The council president said that many service organizations also have financial trouble. Charitable contributions from Orange County residents lag far behind donations raised by other California communities, she noted.

Keynote speaker Narda Zacchino, editor of the Orange County Edition of The Times, said: “There is a callous indifference for the less fortunate among us. There is a coldness among public officials that hasn’t gotten better. It has gotten much worse.”

Another keynote speaker, Mark Baldassare, a demographer who teaches at UC Irvine, said that although a recent poll showed 53% of South County residents make more than $50,000 annually, many people still must rent their homes.

With over one third paying rent, “The image of the expensive house (in South County), with a pool, isn’t true,” he said.