Drug Rehab Required of Some Aid Recipients : Social services: Thus far, 71 people on general relief are told to undergo three-month stay or lose checks. Critics say the plan is designed to knock people off welfare.

Los Angeles County has begun a program linking mandatory alcohol and drug treatment with welfare checks for some recipients--to the dismay of advocates for the poor, who say the practice is discriminatory and designed to knock people off the welfare rolls.

Since the pilot program was instituted in November, many general relief recipients in Los Angeles County are required to go through a three-month residential alcohol and drug treatment program if a doctor recommends it. Those who refuse lose their monthly $293 check.

At a time when the general relief caseload is at an all-time high and costs $400 million a year, county officials are under pressure from the Board of Supervisors to reduce the costs of the program--which, unlike other welfare programs, is funded entirely by the county. In December, fighting a lawsuit filed by homeless advocates, the county made 12% cuts in general relief, the welfare program for single men and women who have no other source of income.

“The general relief program takes a big chunk of the general fund,” said Carol Matsui, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Social Services. “But we also see this as additional opportunity to get people into rehabilitation.”

If the mandatory recovery program is intended to reduce the number of welfare recipients, it is working, though so far in a small way: Only 10 of the 71 people ordered to county treatment facilities in the Antelope Valley have agreed to go; the rest became ineligible for welfare.

Launched in six districts serving 60,000 of the county’s 99,000 general relief clients, the program applies to homeless welfare recipients who cannot participate in a work program because they are disabled.

Under the program, these welfare recipients--the county could not say how many--are asked, as part of their regular medical evaluations, a series of questions about their past and present alcohol and drug use. A doctor decides whether to recommend mandatory treatment, said Clayton Hertz, director of the general relief planning section.

Those ordered into treatment are sent to one of two county facilities in the Antelope Valley, where 100 beds have been freed for the program, or must attend another county-approved facility at their own expense.

Homeless people and their advocates are expected to call on the Board of Supervisors today to overturn the mandatory treatment program. They argue that forced rehabilitation is ineffective and that the program discriminates against people with disabilities.

Marjorie Sa’adah, executive director of Homeless Health Care Los Angeles, criticized county officials for trying to force people into 100 beds when thousands of county residents--as many as 2,000, according to some studies--are on waiting lists for drug treatment.

“If the county wants to address problems of addiction, they should give us 100 additional beds,” she said. “We will fill them with people who want those beds.”

County welfare officials said they instituted the program because welfare recipients who were substance abusers were not volunteering for rehabilitation.

Welfare recipients do not get their checks during the three-month stay at a county treatment facility, nor can they get back on welfare until they successfully complete the program.

Hertz said the county will save money because some general relief recipients will refuse treatment and be dropped off the welfare rolls--although he did not know how many.

The county will save additional dollars because the two rehabilitation facilities receive federal and state funding: The county spends $100 a month on every general relief client in treatment, compared to the $293 spent on a monthly welfare check, Hertz said. In a memo to the Board of Supervisors in the fall, the department projected an annual savings of $281,988 if 100 people participated in the program.

Similar programs exist in Sacramento, Humboldt, Marin and Contra Costa counties and in six other states.

The jury is out on whether compulsory treatment works, said Cheryl Grills, professor of psychology and alcohol and drug studies at Loyola Marymount University. It is not a new idea--courts impose drug treatment as an alternative to incarceration--and “for a percentage of people, it actually helps them,” Grills said.

“But I think in the best of all worlds, it’s the least effective approach,” she said. “People will be somewhat resistant. In some instances, they may be in denial that there is a problem.”

Moreover, she questioned whether the county will address the “very issues that contributed to or exacerbated their addiction--education, employment, quality of life.”

Tha Win, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, said his group is prepared to mount a legal challenge if the county does not overturn the mandatory policy. Kathryn Barger, health deputy for Supervisor Mike Antonovich, said her office has received calls from people who complain about welfare recipients who buy drugs and alcohol with the checks.

“We know it’s going on,” Barger said. “Mike’s position is that if there are people out there using it to buy drugs, then we need to put a stop to it.”

However, Hertz noted that of the nearly 60,000 general relief clients served in the pilot project areas, the number of people referred to mandatory treatment is far below what county officials had anticipated.

“I was expecting 100 beds to be filled by now,” he said, “and the information shows that they simply aren’t going to be.”

Times staff writer Hector Tobar contributed to this story.