SAN CLEMENTE : Nutrition Program Needs New Quarters

A young mother rocked a stroller laden with three toddlers while she waited for her name to be called by a worker shuffling through dozens of indexed files.

In a corner, a group of women sat in a cluster on the floor, cradling their newborns as they strained to hear a presentation on formula feeding. Still more parents and infants occupied bleachers on the side of the room, watching the older children run around the colorful, carpeted gymnasium at the Boys & Girls Club of the South Coast Area.

Ruth Davis, who oversees administration of the federally funded Women, Infants and Children nutritional health program there, could barely be heard over the noise.

“See how it echoes in here?” Davis said. “There is no way you can yell to a group of people and be heard.”

For low-income parents struggling to raise families in affluent South Orange County, the popularity of the program has outstripped the capacity of the gymnasium, Davis said.

“In other clinics, we take groups of women into different rooms and show them educational videotapes,” she explained. “Here, all they can do is sit on the bleachers or on the floor.”

At 10 sites countywide, officials administer a program designed to supplement grocery bills with food coupons, provide nutritional education and ensure prenatal and early childhood medical checkups.

“These are the kind of women who would normally rely on emergency rooms because they can’t afford a doctor,” said Michele van Eyken, the county’s program coordinator who oversees funds from the federal Department of Agriculture.

“But with this public health program, we’re preventing people from getting sick when they practice what we teach them,” van Eyken said, noting that many women are drawn to classes on healthy eating because their monthly appointments include $35 worth of coupons for costly food items such as eggs, cheese, milk, iron-fortified infant formula, peanut butter and breakfast cereal.

Those foods help prevent the early onset of anemia, low birth-weight infants and stillbirths, van Eyken added.

“It’s hard having five kids in South Orange County,” said 28-year-old Mary Rice of Laguna Hills, whose brood ranges in age from 1 month to 8 years old.

A fruitless search for a larger South County site has left officials unsure of where they can find at least 1,500-square feet of space available for more than one day per month, van Eyken said.

“We could fill one to two days per week,” she said. “But it isn’t cost-effective to lease anything in South County because it is so expensive. We’ve mined everything down there, and we’re finding that places like churches and areas that offer activities have already been milked.”

Davis said the overcrowding causes them to pull eligible children out of the program at 18 months instead of the maximum of age 5, if they are deemed healthy.

“By the time the morning is over, we will have served 200 people here,” Davis said. “That’s what we would serve in a day at other clinics in the county. We’re running out of time.”

The overcrowding problems are indicative of a growing trend toward a lack of human services in South County, as discussed at a recent Dana Point conference joining business leaders, local politicians and community service providers.

“It’s a false perception that everyone is rich down here, but that is the way people see South County,” Davis said.