Charitable Groups in Need of a Helping Hand : Social services: A cash crunch forces organizations that help the poor, homeless and elderly into severe cutbacks. Hard times are worsened by skyrocketing client loads.

Pam Cole, manager of the Santa Ana office of the Episcopal Service Alliance, was explaining to a visitor last week about the tough times ahead for her charitable group when her guest swept out a checkbook and wrote a $100 donation.

The irony of the act was not lost on Cole. The guest was a former homeless client who had been working steadily for only abut six months but figured his former benefactors needed the money more than he did.

The service alliance, one of the county’s largest charitable groups with five service centers and two homeless shelters scattered around the county, has had to cut back services by half because funding has not kept pace with its burgeoning client load.

“We always struggle in the summer, but this summer we have no reserves whatsoever,” said Robert Morris, ESA board president. “We are unable to maintain the same level of support.”

The board voted to close the Laguna Beach center, which caters mainly to poor mentally ill clients, and will provide fewer goods and services to others: Fewer low-income working people will receive bus tickets; fewer homeless will get emergency motel passes; fewer elderly people will have their medical prescriptions filled at no cost; fewer young needy families will have their utility bills paid.

The action points up a major problem facing charity groups this summer, which is traditionally a time when caseloads increase but donations lag.

With the temporary closing of Costa Mesa’s Share Our Selves, another large charity, and cutbacks among other organizations, Orange County’s poor may face one of the toughest summers in memory, service providers say.

“It’s shaping up that way,” said Mark Lowry, manager of a local food bank and chairman of the Orange County Hunger Coalition.

The hunger coalition represents dozens of community organizations that serve tens of thousands of low-income and poor people. At the group’s meeting Thursday the seriousness of the cutbacks--and the impact--was the main topic.

Among those painting a bleak picture of things to come were Mary Ann Salamida, director of the Neighborhood Service Center in Santa Ana, which is scheduled to close in week if it does not find a new home.

The group has been asked by its landlord, the Southern Baptist Assn., to leave its old quarters to make room for the Baptist groups’ expanded programs, Salamida said.

If the center does not receive help in finding new quarters, thousands of poor, mostly Latino and Cambodian clients, will lose valuable services that include health counseling, prenatal classes and food services.

Other groups that have been hard hit include:

* Southwest Minority Economic Development Assn., which provides food, clothing and other services for more than 200 clients a day. The group has cut back its food basket program from five days to three.

* FISH Inc., which provides in-home food services for 10 to 15 families daily as well as rental assistance and other emergency services. The group has cut back its food operation to once a month and has been forced to turn down requests for other services.

* Share Our Selves, which has a client load of more than 10,000 people a month, suspended operations last Friday after being evicted from its longtime home at the Rea Community Center. The group is preparing to move into new quarters. However, agency directors guess that services may be cut off the entire summer until the new building is ready.

The closing has already had a severe ripple effect among other community groups.

FISH director Debby O’Conner, for example, said her agency’s caseload has increased nearly 50% since SOS closed its doors.

“It seems that almost simultaneously community organizations in the county are being hit very badly,” Lowry said. “We are working in a less than ideal situation with grossly inadequate resources.”

Officials with the United Way of Orange County are working to convene an emergency meeting later this month with the twin objectives of relieving the situation and raising public awareness of the importance community-based organizations play in meeting the needs of the county’s poor.

The agency is considering providing financial relief for some of the organizations that have been hardest hit, said spokesman Jeff Rocke.

“We empathize with the situation and believe that if we can get cooperation and coordination among the public and private sectors there may be a way to solve some of the problems,” Rocke said. “However, we are not in a strong position to respond with monetary solutions because the dollars we raise are stretched across so many different areas and this is just one concern.”

County Social Services Agency Director Larry Leaman said community-based groups are experiencing the same trend that has hit county welfare providers: tremendous growth in the numbers of county residents who need assistance to make ends meet.

For example, the numbers of Medi-Cal clients this year have grown by 50%, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program has grown more than 18%, and the food stamp program by nearly 25%, Leaman said.

“Our gut feeling is that there is a mini-recession or economic slowdown that is impacting the low-income workers and the poor, which ultimately affects organizations that serve them,” Leaman said. “The thing we don’t know is if the closing of SOS and the other cutbacks will have an impact in our (welfare) offices. That is something we will be monitoring.”