Program Aims to Solve Handicaps Early : Education: With one day to spare, the Legislature re-authorizes funding for NON-RIS, which helps children with learning, social and emotional problems.

Four-year-old Jessica Mora has just a little problem.

“My daughter speaks very loudly when she talks,” said parent Aurora Mora through an interpreter. “It seems that she’s screaming or yelling.”

A few among her preschool classmates have other little problems. Some use phrases where they should use sentences. Some have trouble articulating words. A few can’t follow directions that contain a two-step sequence. Then there are a number of preschoolers who do not interact properly with their peers or do not sit still or listen.

They all seem like such little problems in such little tykes. Yet many of these children are destined to land in special-education classes by the time they reach grade school, because these little problems will grow bigger even as children do.

A program called NON-RIS aims to solve these handicaps in preschool.

NON-RIS more or less stands for “Not Requiring Intensive Services.” The acronym, which refers to children without severe handicaps, makes little sense, but educators say the program does. They say it helps preschool children overcome learning, social and emotional problems in preschool. That way, the problems will not haunt the children throughout their school years.

“The amount of improvement due to early intervention far outweighs any input you can give to kids when they’re older,” said Pete Ruthenbeck, a psychologist with the program.

Jessica Mora worked with NON-RIS counselors at a Santa Fe Springs campus for Head Start, a federal program intended to prepare low-income or at-risk children for success in school.

Head Start teachers, however, are not necessarily prepared to handle children with even slight disabilities.

At this site, across from Los Nietos park, the NON-RIS counselors first screened the children to find those with special needs, then mingled with them during school hours, providing low-key, individualized attention.

Aurora Mora says Jessica’s speech problem has improved since her daughter began working with counselors. And there have been other benefits.

“Since she started, she’s improved in her comprehension of words,” Mora said. “Now when someone is talking to her she pays attention to what the person is saying. She’s also learning more English. She also stands up for herself better and knows the difference between right and wrong.”

The progress is not confined to the child. Mora said the counselors have shown her how to help her daughter and where to go for more assistance.

One of the program’s goals is to educate parents and teachers, to show them how to aid children with special needs when counselors are not there.

Although counselors insist that the program makes a tremendous difference in youngsters’ lives, it is hard to prove how much trouble a well-adjusted child might have had. “It’s extremely difficult to document improvement when you look at prevention,” said Karen Polk, who coordinates NON-RIS locally.

Polk works for the Whittier Area Cooperative Special Education Program, a consortium which administers special-education programs for seven Whittier-area school districts. Most of the partnership’s resources are destined for severely handicapped students, who are not the focus of NON-RIS, said John Hess, the consortium’s director.

“When California entered into the program as a three-year commitment (in 1987), the first year we took it as a try-and-see,” he said.

Hess hired two temporary employees to serve about 45 NON-RIS students in the new project’s first year.

This year, 212 children were helped by six specialists in speech-and-language or early-childhood development as well as two bilingual aides and two part-time psychologists. NON-RIS counselors worked regularly at 11 area sites in addition to making periodic visits to numerous regional preschools. Across the state, the program served about 10,000 children.

Although NON-RIS is entirely federally funded, state lawmakers nearly allowed the program to lapse because they feared California could get stuck with the tab in the long run. California has had that experience with programs for handicapped students in the past, said Dr. Linda Brekken, a specialist who helps develop special-education programs in school districts across the state.

In 1975, Congress authorized a federal share of 40% of costs to educate handicapped children. Since then, “they’ve never provided more than 12%. At this point, they’ve fallen to 9%,” Brekken said.

That is why some lawmakers insisted on some financial safeguards, said Mary Anne Moore, a legislative assistant to Assemblyman Thomas M. Hannigan (D-Fairfield), the author of a bill to re-authorize the program. “The bill specifies it doesn’t involve state funds unless on a voluntary basis,” Moore said. “Specifically, it says the state participation will terminate if federal funds do.”

With that proviso in place, Gov. George Deukmejian signed the legislation to re-authorize the program June 29, one day before funding would have ended. As a result, the state will retain nearly $28 million in federal aid; more than $7.5 million will go to Los Angeles County.

Ultimately the measure passed unanimously, but just in case, school-district officials had already delivered notices of potential layoffs to counselors.

The legislative uncertainly resulted in an unanticipated answer to the question of whether NON-RIS is just another nice social program extravagance in an era of tight budgets.

“If you could see the avalanche of mail that we have gotten from parents that are so grateful that their children have been able to receive help with their handicaps and are now mainstreamed into classrooms,” Moore said, “you wouldn’t have to ask” if the program was worth the cost.

As Brekken sees it, “it’s pay now or pay a lot more later. You don’t want to wait until children are 5 or 6 years old and really bomb out in school.”

One program aide noted that the concept came along too late to benefit her grown nephew. “It could have helped him,” said Felisa Reveles. “He has a speech problem. He’s very conscious of it. He’s not talkative.”

At a Santa Fe Springs child-care center in Los Nietos Park, psychologist Ruthenbeck looked up while helping a youngster with dexterity problems learn to hold a paint brush. “They’ll be right on target,” he predicted of his charges. “They’ll never have to experience being different.”