County to Close Mental Health Clinics if Prop. 134 Fails : Services: Cuts would close two South Bay clinics and end care for 22,000 low-income patients countywide.

Los Angeles County officials are prepared to close down two clinics serving more than 2,400 mentally ill patients in the South Bay if a tax initiative on the November ballot is defeated.

The county plan also calls for slashing funding for several private mental health agencies that serve hundreds of other mentally ill people in the area.

If the plan proceeds, it would be the second year in a row for clinic closures in the South Bay. Last year, the County Board of Supervisors closed the Coastal Community Mental Health Center in Carson and the Wilmington Mental Health Center. Staffing and service also were reduced at clinics in Hawthorne and San Pedro.

Psychologists and social workers said last week that the latest proposed reductions threaten to cripple an already thin supply of psychotherapeutic services for poor people in the South Bay, sending some psychotic and schizophrenic patients into the streets and landing others in already crowded jails and hospitals.

County officials blame the proposed cuts, which would total $40 million countywide, on reductions in state funding. Only a significant increase in the state alcohol tax, proposed in Proposition 134 on the statewide Nov. 6 ballot, can stave off the “drastic” reductions, said Roberto Quiroz, director of the Los Angeles County Mental Health Department.

Proposition 134--the so-called nickel-a-drink measure--would raise about $760 million a year for a variety of social and health programs.

The initiative has been opposed by a well-financed ad campaign. Opponents say it should be defeated because it would lock into the state budget higher levels of spending than the increased alcohol tax would raise. Thus, they warn, it could lead to other tax increases.

If Prop. 134 is defeated, the cuts in the county’s mental health budget could be adopted as soon as Nov. 15.

A contingency plan circulated last week among county employees and private mental health providers estimates that the cuts would eliminate care for about 22,000 of the 52,000 mostly low-income patients who now receive mental health treatment in the county.

“Those people are seriously in need of some agency to help them meet the crises in their lives,” said Ann Brand, president of the 42-member Assn. of Community Mental Health Agencies. “And those people are going to end up on your doorstep and on my doorstep and in much worse shape than they are now.”

The plan to cope with the projected cash shortage for mental health programs contemplates closing 12 of the county’s 23 public mental health clinics and drastically reducing grants to private, nonprofit agencies that serve the mentally ill poor.

The South Bay would lose the San Pedro Mental Health Center, which serves about 700 patients, and the South Bay Mental Health Service Clinic in Hawthorne, with a case load of 1,737.

Carol Vernon, acting district chief of the Hawthorne clinic, said the morale of both patients and employees has been hurt by the talk of the clinic’s closure. Three workers have already left for more stable jobs, she said.

“I had a call last week from a client who was hysterical,” Vernon said. “Her therapist had just left and she had changed (therapists) twice in the last six months. She was real concerned about whether she would have to change again, and I had to tell her there was a possibility, even, that this clinic would be closing.

“She was extremely frightened and scared and just said, ‘Where am I going to go?’ ” Vernon said.

Workers in private clinics would not be accustomed to handling the severe cases that routinely come to county facilities, Vernon said.

Under the county plan, many privately operated centers for the mentally ill also would have their funding cut, which likely would leave fewer facilities to care for those who are pushed out of county clinics.

Officials with Excelsior House, a crisis treatment home in Inglewood for the mentally ill, said they would have to close if the county follows through with a proposed $500,000 cut. The 14-bed home serves clients from the South Bay and Westside.

Project Return, a program based at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Hawthorne, also would be forced to shut down, its officials said. The program establishes neighborhood clubs at which mentally ill people can meet to discuss how to cope with independent living after they have been released from state hospitals or from board-and-care homes.

Officials with the Harbor View House in San Pedro said they would have to close the homeless residential program if the county cuts take effect. The home provides its clients with psychiatric care and housing for up to 12 days, as well as help in applying for government assistance, finding permanent homes and training for jobs. Six people can stay at the home at any time, and at least a dozen others daily receive services.

The 1736 Family Crisis Center in Redondo Beach would lose about one-third of a budget that supports four programs--a hot line for the suicidal and mentally ill, support groups for battered women and other traumatized groups, assessment and placement of the mentally ill in other treatment programs, and community education on such topics as child abuse and suicide prevention, said center director Carol Adelkoff. How the center would apportion the cuts is unclear, she said.

In place of the closed clinics, the county plans to operate an emergency system: Ten regional offices would provide medication and track 3,000 of the most disturbed patients, and Psychiatric Mobile Response Teams would respond to calls for emergency psychiatric care.