Budget Cloud Brings Gloom to Successful State Social Programs

As Gov. George Deukmejian and the Legislature wrestle with a $3.6-billion budget deficit, the fate of dozens of social programs, affecting millions of Californians, hangs in the balance.

The programs range from AIDS research to Indian education to diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. The programs are generally non-controversial and enjoyed widespread support in prosperous years. But when money is tight, as it is in the 1990-91 budget, this kind of spending is in trouble.

“This is not fun,” said Cindy Katz, assistant director of finance. “Nobody likes cutting programs like Alzheimer’s disease or child-abuse prevention . . . but we can’t afford them, not this year.”

Some affected groups have demonstrated against the proposed budget cuts in rallies on the Capitol steps. Representatives of the handicapped even stormed into the governor’s outer office last week, demanding that he restore the state’s $5.5-million independent living program.

But little is heard about most of the programs whose fate will be determined in talks between Deukmejian and legislative leaders in the next week or so. One of these is the much-praised Child Abuse Prevention Training Act, which teaches public school children and their parents and teachers how to detect and prevent the growing problem of child abuse. The program costs the state about $10 million a year.

That is not much money in a state budget of $56 billion, but it is more than the governor wants to spend in a year in which expenditures threaten to exceed revenues by almost $4 billion.

California’s program is one of the nation’s few statewide efforts to prevent child abuse and has won acclaim from educators, psychologists and law enforcement officials.

“The concept of prevention is infinitely better than trying to pick up the pieces later, in prisons and other such places,” said Ruth Kempe, of the National Center for Prevention and Detection of Child Abuse and Neglect, in Denver.

The program is administered by the state Department of Social Services, which gives grants to local school districts and nonprofit organizations to carry out the training.

State law requires that children receive training once in preschool, once in kindergarten and three more times before high school graduation. Some school districts do more.

So far, almost 5 million California youngsters have received instruction, said Kate Kain, executive director of the Child Assault Prevention Center of Northern California.

Kain said her Oakland center maintains a pool of 30 “prevention specialists” who use role-playing and other techniques to teach children how to know when they are being abused and what to do about it. They also offer instruction to parents and teachers.

“There has been tremendous support for this from law enforcement officials, therapists and educators,” Kain said.

In Los Angeles, the training is done by a special child-abuse prevention office in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Shayla Lever, director of the unit, said $600,000 in state money and another $200,000 in local district funds were spent this year in about 150 elementary schools. (That left another 300 elementary schools, as well as all of the district’s junior and senior high schools, uncovered.)

Without the state money, “the program would be dismantled,” Lever said.

The only words of criticism, and those were mild, have come from Legislative Analyst Elizabeth G. Hill, who said in her annual analysis of the budget that researchers do not agree on the effectiveness of child-abuse prevention programs, especially in the early grades.

But Jon Conte, associate professor in the School of Social Services Administration at the University of Chicago, disagreed.

“There is quite a lot of research” to show that young children do pick up skills to detect and prevent child abuse (though how much they retain remains a question) and that there are no “unanticipated consequences,” such as nightmares or bed-wetting, Conte said.

Conte recently studied more than 3,200 children in 38 schools in 11 California counties, and found that 19% reported that they “told an adult that they were being sexually abused” and that 25% reported that they “got away from someone trying to kidnap them.”

Although this is only a “simplistic first step,” Conte said, the survey indicated that California’s program is effective in teaching youngsters how to deal with the threat of physical and sexual abuse.

Whatever its merits, child abuse prevention was marked for extinction when the governor presented his 1990-91 spending program to the Legislature last January.

Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), author of the 1984 legislation that established the program, led a successful charge to restore the money to the legislative version of the budget.

But Deukmejian eliminated the item again, along with dozens of others, when he made public a proposed list of $3.6 billion in cuts and trims last week.

“Since most of the training is done in the schools, it seemed to us the schools could find the money for it if they thought it was a high enough priority,” said Katz, the assistant finance director. “After all, the schools are getting $17 billion in Proposition 98 funds.” Proposition 98, passed two years ago, guarantees public schools and community colleges at least 40% of the state’s general fund and total spending of $27 billion.

But Waters continues the fight. She has gathered more than 1,000 letters and petition signatures from police chiefs, sheriffs, judges, district attorneys, psychologists, educators and others, all urging the governor to restore the child-abuse prevention money.

Included are the Los Angeles Police Department, the sheriffs of Alameda, Orange, San Diego and Ventura counties and police chiefs from Berkeley, San Francisco, San Jose, the city of Orange, Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach and many other cities.

“We’re pulling out all the stops,” Waters said. “We’re not leaving much to chance.”