Children’s Well-Being Is Top Issue of Summit : Family: Broad spectrum of 325 community leaders pledge millions of dollars and volunteer time in ‘the first chapter’ on developing ways to improve the deteriorating condition of county’s youth.

Orange County leaders on Saturday promised to place the welfare of the county’s almost 600,000 children among their top priorities, pledging millions of dollars and thousands of volunteer hours toward the renewed effort.

The promises were made as a broad section of the community--elected officials, professionals, nonprofit organizations, churches, government entities, legislators, corporations and small business--gathered at Chapman University for the county’s first summit for children.

As the summit drew to a close, leaders took turns making specific pledges to improve the deteriorating condition of Orange County’s children.

Shelley Westmore, executive director of the Orangewood Children’s Foundation, announced that the nonprofit agency that advocates the rights and welfare of abused and neglected children will spend up to $10 million on children’s programs during the next seven years. Because of the summit, she said, the foundation’s board will soon award up to $100,000 in grants to local child-care agencies.

Glenn Parrish, a manager with the Fieldstone Company, received loud applause when he announced that the Newport Beach development firm will donate $1 million during the next two years to local children’s programs that promote the summit’s goals.

Earlier, Orange County Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez announced that the county was working with Cal State Fullerton to develop a mechanism to track, among other things, numbers of high school dropouts, teen-age birth rates and the numbers of children with sexually transmitted diseases.

“These indicators will help create a map to give us the right direction to follow,” Vasquez said. “It will not be fault-finding . . . but it will assist all of us in planning an agenda for children.”

The summit culminated two years of planning by an energetic cadre of local children’s advocates who initially got together in 1990 after the United Nations World Summit for Children called on communities to use the last decade of the century to focus on the welfare of children.

Recent surveys show that Orange County children are still healthier and better educated than many others nationwide, but increasingly many of them are being deprived of adequate care, housing and family stability. Latest statistics show increases in violence, poverty rates, and teen birth rates--problems that children advocates say have the greatest long-term influences for children and are the most difficult to reverse.

But leaders expressed some optimism that the community could work together to reverse the the downward trend.

Supervisor William G. Steiner, who had headed the Orangewood Children’s Foundation before joining the Board of Supervisors last March, said the county has “not yet stemmed the tide of children who are being abused and neglected, nor have we assured that all children will receive appropriate medical care, nor have we found the key to dismantling the gangs that are becoming an ever more menacing presence in our county.

“But the good news is that as a community acting together in behalf of our children, we can begin to make strides in all of these areas and many more,” Steiner said.

Maureen DiMarco, the state secretary of child development and education, praised community leaders for organizing the conference.

“We must educate all of the community as to the human and financial costs of kids not coming first,” said DiMarco, a former Garden Grove school board president.

“It’s not different here. From Santa Ana . . . to Oakland to rural areas, children are finding it impossible to achieve those natural human aspirations.”

After DiMarco’s keynote address, the summit’s 325 participants broke into small groups to discuss ways the community could better serve children.

“We have to place more emphasis on the family,” Robert A. Griffith, chief deputy director of the county’s Social Services Agency, told one group. “We could spend millions and millions of dollars in government assistance, but we’re not going to make any headway if we don’t reach out to the family.”

Nearby, a group of about 25 teen-agers talked about the same issue. One girl said that she could not spend enough time with her parents simply because they both left for work early in the morning and returned home late at night. “They’re too busy paying the bills . . . and (too busy) for me,” she said.

Later in the day, representatives of volunteer and professional groups said they will donate thousands of hours to hold classes in parenting and child abuse prevention across the county.

Summit leaders said they planned to ensure that children’s issues remain a top priority, noting that they had developed mechanisms to track the county’s performance.

“We’re not going away,” said Wayne Hart, a summit leader. “This is only the first chapter.”